The Worsening Education Woes

The recently-released results of the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination, SSCE, conducted by the National Examination Council, NECO, in November/December, 2011 and that of the 2012 JAMB/UTME, have again thrown up the issue of the serious crisis afflicting the nation’s education sector.

The performance of the candidates is so dismal that worried Nigerians want a state of emergency declared in the sector.

Isn’t it worrisome that only 14.15% of those who sat for English Language, one of the core subjects, passed at the NECO examination? The candidates also did not fare better in another core subject, Mathematics, as well as other science subjects. It was the same poor performance candidates who wrote the 2011 June/July SSCE examination recorded as only 25% of them passed at credit level.

Available statistics revealed that candidates’ performance in the 2012 JAMB/UTME was worse than the previous year’s record. Only three candidates scored above 300 in this year’s JAMB/UTME whereas 2,892 scored above 300 last year.

This year’s results from the two major public examinations show that there is a progressive decline in the education sector and this has to be arrested otherwise the future of this nation is doomed.

Students really need re-orientation in order to imbibe the values of hard work. Rather than read their books, most students spend their precious time browsing the internet or watching European league matches. When they don’t read, they resort to cutting corners to pass their examinations at all costs.

Sometimes, they don’t succeed in their scheme to outsmart the invigilators during public examinations, such as WASCE, NECO and JAMB/UTME. The outcome of their poor reading habit is the poor results we now get.

Some teachers also share in the blame for this sorry state of affairs in the education sector. They cannot give what they do not have. Some of the teachers are products of the same system that is in serious decay. These half-baked teachers compound the woes of the pupils and students they teach.

As serious as the crisis in the education sector is, the Federal Government keeps paying lip service to it. Government allocates huge funds to other sectors of the economy while crumbs are left for education. For instance, education was allocated N66 billion, one of the least, in this year’s budget.

As long as everyone toys with the sector, the future will be bleak. But we all have a choice to make education the bedrock of our nation’s development.

For the umpteenth time we are calling on the relevant authorities, stakeholders such as parents and teachers to rise to the occasion and stop this dangerous drift.

All the talk about vision 20-2020 by which time Nigeria will become one of the 20 leading economic giants in the world will be a pipe dream if the education sector is allowed to remain in this present state of rot. How can the nation develop economically if we do not have a well-educated workforce?