Guardian

Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo is a widely respected education specialist and consultant, who has authored and co-authored several published works on core public and private education sector issues. She is currently the Director of Corona Secondary School, Agbara, Ogun State. The University of Ibadan scholar and recipient of a Federal Government scholarship, spoke to ROTIMI LAWRENCE OYEKANMI on a wide range of issues. Excerpts:

MANY stakeholders are complaining about teachers’ competence across the board. One school of thought says lack of proper teaching is responsible for mass failure in public examinations. Another school of thought argues that teachers are indirectly responsible for moral decadence in schools? How skillful do you think a contemporary teacher should be? What should be his or her role?

Before I go into what I want to say, I will say that I have met many great teachers; many of whom are still teaching today. They care about the children and they are hardworking professionals who believe in what they are doing and appreciate the almost mystic role they play in their students’ lives. However, they are the exception and not the rule.

There is no doubt that the quality of schools has a direct causal relationship with the quality of teachers. We can therefore say that to some extent, our teachers are contributing to these poor results. However, I look at it in a broader way. Why do we expect our teachers to be competent professionals? What is the entry point into teacher education? Are they getting good quality initial teacher training in our Colleges of Education? What about subsequent professional development? Is teaching a profession of choice? Can we really honestly expect teachers to be immune from the decadence in our society? Are they responsible for this decadence? Don’t teachers deserve to afford a good quality existence for themselves and their families?

Honestly I believe we are getting what we have planned for. In the best educational systems, teachers are well trained, well remunerated, revered professionals. They are involved in planning the curriculum, designing instruction, researching into new trends. What do we have in Nigeria? Teaching is no longer a respected profession. Teachers are rarely, if ever involved in planning for the sector. Their salaries are withheld when there are financial problems and they are not regarded as valuable professionals. In many instances, being a teacher is a route to certain poverty. It was not always so but this is the present reality. People do not want to go into teaching and people do not even want their children to marry teachers!

If that is the reality, what do we think will happen? Teachers will not be skilled, will not be committed and the vicious cycle of poor student performance will perpetrate itself.

Recently, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) released its Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) results, revealing a very poor performance. This follows the pattern of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), being conducted by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and Senior School Certificate Examination being administered by the National Examinations Council (NECO). What do you think is responsible for this?

There are many reasons for the poor results. An analysis of the sector shows a complex intertwining of many related and unrelated factors. It ranges from home and parental support, to quality of schools, teachers, school leaders and quality of education management. It includes inadequate funding; sub-optimal use of funds and diversion of funds though corruption and other leakages.

It has legal, regulatory, financial and social aspects. I know that we are investing less than the UNESCO recommended level of investment in education, but Nigeria’s investment in education is larger than the sum total of many of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The deployment of the amount for education has been a major issue.

There are also quality factors such as teacher quality, the quality (depth and breadth) of the curriculum, our methods of assessment, availability of resources such as library books, laboratories and classroom furniture. Culture is another factor that complicates an already complex system. For students to do well, there must be a culture of high expectations, a belief that every child deserves a chance to succeed and an investment in making this happen.

I want to conclude that we need visionary, passionate, competent, honest people who know that what matters most in any school system is what happens in the classroom between the possible to ensure that investment, planning and funding decisions put this interaction first.

Some people argue that examinations should no longer be the only yardstick for measuring students’ academic abilities. Do you agree?

This is an interesting argument and I agree that there are many assessment methods; examinations being one of them. By their nature, examinations are adequate for measuring certain skills, but it is well known that some students do not perform well under the rather artificial environment of exams but would exhibit their skills in a less pressured environment. I also feel that our examination questions address the lower end of cognitive skills and are oftentimes measuring the ability to cram and regurgitate rather than application of principles.

In an ideal environment, we would be able to assess learning through additional tools, such as portfolios (art students for example should be able to submit their works for assessment), project work assessment, oral tests, meaningful, standards-based, school-based continuous assessment and so on. Our exam questions would measure additional skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving and creativity.

But, the reality is that we have not built an educational system that is flexible and adaptable and capable of transparently managing a more advanced assessment system.

Do you believe in the 6-3-3-4 system?

I think the thinking behind the 6-3-3-4 system was original and well meaning. The main problem has been implementation. It does not look like enough thought was given to the technical, financial and skills implication of the new system. For it to work, laboratories and workshops would have to be built and equipped, teachers trained and consumables and resources made continuously available.

If implemented well, it might have led to a renaissance in this country but implementation was haphazard and even now, many of its original intentions have been subsumed. For example, after basic education, students were to have a choice between an academic and a vocational education. We all know the latter never took off and virtually all children transited to senior secondary schools where most vocational subjects were not taught.

Do you agree that the secondary education curriculum, being touted by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) is suitable for the country?

The curriculum is well-meaning like a lot of the things that we do, but I am not sure the planners discussed with schools and implementation is rather protracted. The reality on ground is at variance with the vision behind the curriculum.

Frankly, for senior secondary, I think there are too many compulsory subjects. As it is, a Science student need not do any arts subjects apart from English and an Arts student can get away without doing any Science subject. In addition, the curricula for the trade subjects are just coming out and there is virtually no content on entrepreneurship i.e. managing a small business as opposed to learning a trade. I think these are early days and hope that the curriculum will be subject to more in-depth analysis and research.

As the Principal of a reputable private secondary school, what do you view as the challenges of managing students?

Managing students has always been a challenging but rewarding experience. That has not changed. The challenges have however changed because of the fact that the students themselves face daunting circumstances in their own personal lives. Some of the factors in their daily lives that give them the greatest concerns include poverty, parental neglect, uncertainty, hopelessness about their future coupled with distractions from technology and social media.

The impact in school is manifested in bad behavior, absenteeism (physical and mental truancy) and disengagement with learning.

I hesitate to blame the children, especially as I feel that we adults are not providing sufficient nurturing, leadership and guidance necessary to support these children and help them build successful lives. We either over-protect them or neglect their inner yearnings and sometimes try to compensate for obvious neglect by pampering them and not being realistic.

How would you compare secondary education in your own days with what we have now? What has changed for the better or worse?

I would not refer to education as being better or worse in my time in school; rather it is very different now. We must look at education in context. The way we were taught and what we were taught (curriculum content) was probably adequate for those times. There is no doubt that we were well taught by committed and passionate teachers and were imbued with good value systems. However, I am honestly still not sure that my generation has been able to adapt well enough to the world of today because we were taught based on the assumption that the environment would remain stable.

The changes in the educational system that have occurred between now and then are huge and include both positive and negative changes. Positive changes include more knowledge and understanding to support the teaching and learning process such as how to engage all learners, how the brain works and so on.

However, there are many areas where education is worse. Investment in education in Nigeria has not kept pace with advancement in knowledge and population growth. Values based teaching, for example, is no longer regarded as critical and schools are no longer bastions of building nationhood, ultimately leading to deep inequities and subsequent erosion of quality. The inequities include boy-girl, rural-urban, north-south and even across religious divides. The most critical inequity however is between rich and poor. Education used to be a way out of poverty. This is no longer so and the implications of these inequities for the country’s long run economic prosperity, political stability and social cohesion are frightening.