2021: Nigeria’s Education Sector in the Throes of Change, COVID-19

As 2021 draws to a close in two days, Uchechukwu Nnaike and Funmi Ogundare highlight the major events that shaped the education sector in the outgoing year

The outgoing year could best be described as a recovery one for the country’s education sector. This followed the closure of schools for the better part of 2020 to prevent an outbreak of COVID-19. The nine-month strike by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) also paralysed academic activities in public universities. The strike was said to be the longest in 10 years.

When the universities eventually resumed on January 18, 2021, after the suspension of the strike in December 2020, they had to grapple with a backlog of admission, and studies were rushed to pave the way for new students. Accusing the federal government of reneging on its agreement, the academic union kept threatening to resume its strike, causing uneasiness for the students battling to cover lost grounds.

If the union had carried out its recent strike threat, the university system would end the year on strike.

Despite the repeated calls on the government to increase its budgetary allocation to education, the sector got 5.6 per cent of the 2021 budget, the lowest percentage allocation since 2011.

While the recovery process continued in the primary and secondary school levels with various initiatives by the government and the private sector to assist the students, sadly, students in some parts of the north were left behind. They could not return to school due to increasing insecurity in schools. Most schools were shut as the kidnap of students and teachers persisted.

The lockdown and insecurity also led to an increase in out-of-school children in the country. UNICEF said the number has risen from 10.5 million to 13.2 million.

The concerns and campaign against bullying in secondary schools were heightened in the outgoing year, with the untimely death of 12-year-old Sylvester Oromoni of Dowen College, Lagos. Senior students allegedly assaulted him for refusing to join a cult.

On a cheery note, President Muhammadu Buhari announced a new salary scale for teachers and increased the retirement age from 60 to 65 years, with effect from January 2022.

Also, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) announced an unprecedented success rate in its May/June 2021 Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE). It said 1,274,784 candidates, representing 81.7 per cent of the 1,560,261 candidates that sat the examination, a secured credit pass in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.

The reverse was the case for the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), as the examination body stated that candidates’ performance in this year’s Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) was poorer than what it recorded in the past three years.

The Registrar, Prof. Is-haq Oloyede, blamed the development on the truncation of the academic calendar by the rampaging coronavirus pandemic, as well as peculiar environmental factors in Nigeria such as insecurity, among others.

In a commendable move, JAMB remitted N3.51 billion to the national treasury as part of its 2021 operating surplus. The remittance was in line with the registrar’s commitment to prudent management of public resources.

In addition to redeeming the country’s image, the board detected 706,189 illegal admissions by universities, colleges of education, polytechnics and other tertiary institutions. The board said that about 114 universities were responsible for 67,795 illegal admissions; 137 polytechnics were responsible for 489,918; 80 colleges of education were responsible for 142,818; 37 other institutions were involved in 5,678 cases.

The outgoing year also witnessed the passing of the law scrapping the HND/BSc dichotomy by the National Assembly.

The lawmakers said abolishing the existing dichotomy between HND holders and graduates of universities would meet the huge manpower needs of Nigerians, ensure social justice and enhance corporate governance, and encourage patriotic contributions among HND employees in public and private sectors.

This year, the National Universities Commission (NUC) released the ranking of universities in the country. It placed the University of Ibadan ahead of others, with five other private universities on the top 10 list. The ranking, carried out using 12 indicators, involved 113 universities.

In his assessment of the education sector in 2021,

the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Academic, Research, Innovations and Partnerships, Osun State University, Professor Anthony Kola-Olusanya, said the country’s education sector managed to pick up from the several months of COVID-19 induced lockdown of 2020.

He said resumption was sluggish, with much caution about handling the next pandemic.

According to him, while many reputable private primary and secondary schools were able to migrate learning online in 2020, the government-owned schools struggled all through the lockdown. He ascribed the scenario to a reflection of funding available to the sector.

The don said the 2021 budget allocation to education fell below the UNESCO’s Education 2030 Framework for Action proposal.

“Although the allocation to the education sector in the 2021 budget showed an allocation of N771.5 billion (including the UBEC allocation) out of a total budget size of N13.58 trillion, the sector got a 5.68 per cent allocation.

“The Framework for Action proposed two benchmarks as ‘crucial reference points’: allocate at least 4 to 6 per cent of GDP to education and/or allocate at least 15 per cent to 20 per cent of public expenditure to education. Comparatively, the allocation of 5.68 per cent is far below this benchmark.”

He also bemoaned the shortage of teachers at 280,000, especially at the public primary schools, especially in Zamfara State, with pupils’ ratio to a teacher placed at 300:1.

“It is the same situation in most schools in remote areas in Nigeria, where teachers’ shortage has led to the pupils’ lack of interest in education. This notwithstanding is the crises of incompetency arising from nepotic recruiting.”

Funding increased abysmally at the tertiary levels, as Kola-Olusanya noted that the story through the year suggested that it is still far from the expected if the country intends to thrive in the knowledge-driven 21st century.

He noted that what appears to be an increase in funding in the tertiary institutions is a drop in the ocean when placed beside the sector’s needs to be rated as meeting world standards.

“For instance, the combined capital allocation of all 21 colleges of education in the 2021 budget stands at N9.97 billion. This shows an increase of N4.25 billion compared to the 2020 allocation of N5.73 billion. Compared with the 2020 allocation of N77.37 billion, there is an increase of N23.56 billion, representing a 30.5 per cent increase.

“It is also on record that budgets of federal government-owned universities increased in 2021, from N291.92 billion in 2020 to N335.48 billion in 2021. This shows an increase of N43.56 billion. The capital allocation also increased from N11.79 billion in 2020 to N28.95 billion, more than twice the allocation.”

With the budget for tertiary education, the deputy vice-chancellor opined that a better assessment of the primary education sector could be better done by measuring the performance of public schools.

“The National Examinations Council (NECO) released the results of the 2021 June/July Senior School Certificate Examination with 71.64 per cent of the 1,226,631 that sat for the examination, scoring five credits above, including in English and Mathematics.

“For WAEC, 1,274,784 candidates, representing 81.7 per cent of the total 1,560,261 candidates that sat the examination, were said to have secured credit pass in five subjects, including English and Mathematics. On the strength of this, I will assess performance based on the following criteria, WAEC, and NECO results, funding, among others.

“At the same time, a student of Kings College in Lagos State, Akinyemi Oluwafemi, emerged as the best student in the 2021 West African Senior School Certificate Examination in Nigeria. Does this translate to improving the standard of value on investment? Literarily, one may be tempted to want to conclude as thus.”

In his assessment, a professor of African History, Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Ibadan, Isaac Olawale Albert, said 2021 was not good for the education sector. He said schools across the country were shut for months due to COVID 19 pandemic, and some found it challenging using technology for learning.

“When reopened, the schools migrated to virtual mode of teaching and learning. Unfortunately, Nigeria does not have the technology, power supply, stable internet facilities for making the best of this method of acquiring knowledge. Hence, something must have missed out in the quality of knowledge provided for students in this era of COVID -19.”

He also expressed concern about the usual ASUU strike, saying that the length of the strike suggests readily that the education sector is of little priority to the political elite in the country.

“Nigerians blame this on the belief that those leading the country do not have their children in Nigerian schools but abroad. It is noticeable, for example, that the conflict between ASUU and the federal government over the funding of university education in the country still persists, with the likelihood that many more strikes could still be called by the university teachers,” he said.

Albert said universities need revitalisation funds and are asking to be taken out of the IPPIS salary structure. He said the government’s response to these demands is at best feeble.

“Getting out of the mess requires first and foremost that federal and states governments in the country start seeing the education sector as a primary vehicle of sustainable development,” he said, adding that no nation develops better or faster than the attention given to its education sector.

He stressed the need to reform the education sector, saying that at this time, when there is mass youth unemployment, it is imperative for academic institutions to start providing development-relevant knowledge.

“The NUC and other relevant bodies in the country must challenge the institutions to rework their programmes in a manner that could make those graduating from our schools to be providers of labour and not those looking endlessly for non-existing jobs on our streets. It is also not compulsory for all Nigerians to be given university or polytechnic education, as now witnessed.

“Those graduating from our secondary schools could be channelled into technical schools for acquiring knowledge that could make them better employable and relevant to the immediate needs of the society.”

The don also stressed the need for an immediate reformation of the Nigerian secondary education system.