Experts assess education sector performance, chat new course for Buhari
As Muhammadu Buhari assumes office, industry watchers in the education sector have x-rayed the performances of the outgoing administration of Goodluck Jonathan as it’s relate to education and called on the present administration to seek strategic steps to address lapses noticed.
Analysts in their various summations on the Goodluck Jonathan’s education policy expressed different views, while some considered the education policies of the outgoing administration as being fairly good, others totally rubbished some steps taken by Jonathan on education.
Dosunmu Babatunde, an education consultant considered the policy on education at present as imperfect and ineffective going by the incapacity of the policy to proffer practical solutions to the encumbering developmental malaise.
Babatunde believed that the proliferation of universities is nothing if they could not positively impact on the socio-economic development of the country. He faulted the creation of additional universities, saying that the country, at this time, did not need additional universities, but expansion, upgrading and effectiveness of the existing ones should be the compulsory consideration of the Federal Government.
He called on Buhari to encourage the establishment of adequate autonomy in tertiary institutions instead of creation of more tertiary institutions that would starved of funds, enabling environment and adequately effective academic staff, saying that the existing universities could favourably expand to accommodate more students than the newly established ones.
The consultant further urged the incoming Federal Government and National Universities Commission (NUC) to enforce standards on the Private Universities operating in the country to ensure that consumers of tertiary education are protected from sub-standard quality, adding that their curricula should be made to support developmental initiatives and skills that are capable of reforming the country.
Another educationist who spoke but on the condition of anonymity believed that the outgoing administration scored below average in the Secondary School level of Education which she referred to as the bedrock of tertiary education.
The educationist declared that examination malpractices were rampant all through the years of Jonathan administration because the Federal Government lacked in its functions to adequately and effectively regulate Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations such as WAEC, NECO and JAMB, saying that Secondary School Curricula should be restructured in such a way that everything needed for effective education and training students would encompassed.
She further advocated the training and retraining of teaching staff in all the secondary schools across the country to equip them with modern teaching skills and technology, saying that the rate at which Nigeria is moving in terms of education and training in secondary schools is too slow and ineffective compared to other institutions that are WAEC members in West African Sub-region.
On his part, Isaac Adeyemi, Vice chancellor, Bells University of Science and Technology, Ota said the low ranking of Nigerian Universities in the past six years have repeatedly counted against the administration of Jonathan.
Adeyemi said none of the Nigerian universities would be ranked among top ten universities in African and in the world, except cogent and effective solutions were found to addressing the challenges.
The Vice-chancellor stated that though the outgoing administration tried its best on in terms of accreditation and quality assurance, he stresses that it is required of the incoming administration to take a pragmatic and effective approach to the issue of incessant strike ravaging Nigerian institutions as well as increasing the budgetary allocations given the university as that would enhance effective learning and researches across the universities in the country.
He declared that Nigerian universities would favourably compete with their counterparts in the world if the anomalies be-deviling the education system, especially university education, which had been identified as inadequate funding and incessant industrial action; were effectively addressed, just as this would boost the university education system and make the certificates issued compared favourably with any university in the world.
“Government should increase the funding; we are like Oliver Twist. You remember I said the quantum has increased and so much our problem too. So government, apart from continuing through the National Universities Commission (NUC), accreditation of programmes, institutional accreditation, all the workshops they are doing, should fund universities more”, the Vice-chancellor noted.
KELECHI EWUZIE