Coronavirus pandemic has shown in a dramatic way how unprepared Nigeria’s education system is for the 21st-century environment driven by innovation and digital technologies.
Africa’s largest economy requires inclusive development, collaboration and collective funding for its education sector to be relevant and globally competitive post Covid-19, according to panellists at the BusinessDay national discourse on Nigeria’s COVID-19 response, Wednesday.
The session, ‘Nigeria education system in the era of virtual classrooms’, was moderated by Remi Adekoya, former Political Editor, Warsaw Business Journal.
The education sector has been one of the biggest losers since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic forced the government to enact a total closure and disruption of academic activities across the country.
Decades of government underfunding of education has left the sector to solve 21st-century problems with an educational system designed for the 19th century.
The panellists comprising of educationists, technologists, government educational policy designers and financial experts said for Nigeria to overcome the various challenges around access, funding, teacher quality and inequity that its education sector grapples with, there must be a shift around the narrative of funding in the education space.
To tackle the challenge of upgrading teaching and learning processes in Nigerian schools, the panellists were unanimous in suggesting the educational system needs to climb out of the woods of an educational system designed for the Industrial Age. The 19th-century approach had insisted every learner has to process in lockstep. But the approach is failing to achieve efficient and effective learning.
“The old industrial way of learning was rigid and failed to develop individuality. Digital tools enable highly personalised learning processes, guarantee efficient investment and improve performance,” Sim Shagaya, founder of uLesson, a digital learning platform, said. “Roofs, buildings and benches are not the real measures of educational achievement. The problem is less a lack of vision as it is a lack of willingness to apply vision.”
Technology is not the only problem to be solved. The educational sector has many other challenges with institutions, teachers and learners. These have always been there and need to be tackled.
“The education sector needs at least N2 trillion every year to make the 21st century-compliant. If we want to do things, those things cost money. We need to spend more on education and we need to do this smartly,” Tunji Adegbesan, founder of GidiMobile, a digital learning application, said.
The government needs to partner with the private sector to facilitate a fresh injection of capital into the sector, he said.
However, according Suleiman Elias Bogoro, executive secretary of TETFund, at all levels, from the basic to tertiary, the first thing in respect of content is curriculum, then pedagogy, which is used as the instrument to implement the curricular policy approved by the regulatory agencies.
“Over the last 10 to 15 years, entrepreneurship was considered very important and introduced to ensure our graduates are relevant in solving local problems. It constituted an embarrassment that graduates left school and were stranded,” Bogoro said.
In terms of jobs and livelihoods among Nigerian youths, it is estimated 28 million Nigerian youths are jobless. There is another set of 100 million Nigerian youths below 18 years old who are on the way. This is why it is critical to ask the question of what education is for in addition to how well it is delivered, the experts said.
“We need to look at the curriculum and personal mastery. When you map high school achievement numbers on conflict zones in Nigeria, you find that they map 100 percent – the northeast accounts for less than 7 percent of high school achievement numbers. We need to improve on access, quality of teaching and what is being taught,” Adegbesan said.
Otto Orondaam, founder of Slum2School, stressed the need “to look at the roots of the problems in education and not the resultant effects”.
“Why are we educating? Our education system needs to be tied to a national vision,” Orondaam said.
He said Nigeria needs to refocus the conversation about developing this critical sector by focusing on having an identified national education vision that will drive processes and investment going forward.
According to Orondaam, it is very imperative that as a nation, Nigeria’s education is tied to what is called a national vision.
“Why are primary, secondary and universities going to school? And how will their education impact the economy or the vision of the nation?” he said.
Orondaam observed that government, private and non-for-profit organisations over the years have been working in silos, by not pooling resources to achieve a very clear impact, adding that if managers of the economy don’t address this root cause, the country will continue going in cycles.
“It is important that we refocus our conversation. Data shows that Nigeria has the youngest population in the world and this population will continue to increase. Over 75 percent of people below 35 years are in Nigeria. The next 30 years, that number is going to increase with huge potential,” Orondaam said. “For Nigeria, what I think is the greatest resource that we can tap and maximise is her human resources and the only way we can achieve that is by delivering quality education to young people.” On his part, Adekunle Sonola, executive director, commercial banking, Union Bank, said there is a need for organisations and those who are capable to make the decision to weigh in on a critical sector like education to transform the country.
Commenting on the contribution of the financial sector, Sonola stated that in the short term, Union Bank has trained over 1,100 teachers, organised 23 workshops and over 38 panel sessions all geared towards contributing to the improvement in the education sector.
Patrick Nwakogo, country director, CEO, Dale Carnegie Nigeria, said an average bank spends about three months in training graduates on communication skills.
He said Nigeria should be looking at how its education sector can help build responsible citizenship behaviour, adding that 80 percent of Nigerians are working where they are not passionate to be.
“The school system should help individuals to discover what their passions are and build content around that. Our system of education was built in the 80s, thus we need to build a system that would prepare people for critical thinking, entrepreneurship and innovative mindsets. With this, graduates would be problem-solvers and not job-seekers,” Nwakogo said.
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