Student loan, new curriculum define learning in 2024

Nigerians were excited with the launch of the student loan scheme in the first quarter of 2024, hoping that it would redefine learning, especially for children from low-income families.

The government also took some positive steps to move education forward, especially at the basic cadre, ensuring increased digital learning, skills acquisition, and policy reforms.

Despite the various reform policies in 2024, Nigeria’s education system still faced significant challenges, particularly in relation to equity, quality, and security.

Digital Learning Grows

Education in 2024 witnessed advancement in digital learning drive as the adoption of digital tools in schools saw progress, especially in urban areas.

There was a growing emphasis on e-learning platforms, mobile apps, and online resources to bridge global contemporary learning gaps.

The federal government and private sector players invested in technology-driven educational solutions.

New Curriculum

Moreover, the introduction of 15 vocational skills in basic education was seen as a right step to reposition Nigeria for competence from the grassroots.

Many stakeholders believe that the introduction of 15 vocational skills into the basic schools’ curriculum was a right move that could curb Nigeria’s surging unemployment, underemployment and unemployability rate.

Omowale Ogunrinde, the founder of Field of Skills and Dream (FSD), a vocational, technical and entrepreneurship training institute, said Nigerians pay little or no attention to skills acquisition and said that technical education is critical to the development of any developing country’s economy such as Nigeria.

According to the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) report, “The unemployment rate stood at 5.3 percent in the first quarter of 2024, representing a third consecutive increase since the second quarter of 2023.

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However, the underemployment rate fell from 12.3 percent in the third quarter of 2023 to 10.6 percent in the first quarter of 2024.

Nigeria has one of the world’s highest misery indexes, with many Nigerians experiencing cost-of-living crisis and weak purchasing power due to rising inflation.

This curriculum reform was seen as one of the government’s efforts to revise the national syllabus to accommodate digital literacy, entrepreneurship, and skills development to help the education system align with the global labour market needs.

Jessica Osuere, an education manager, applauded the expansion of the curriculum to include these 15 skills.

“As managers of education, we have severally lamented about this lack of basic skill sets among our graduates across board.

“Our education has been highly theoretical even in the sciences and technology, which is why you see someone studying engineering but cannot couple engines,” she said.

Osuere said empowering the youngsters with such skills would lead to innovations, create more jobs and eradicate poverty in the country.

Students’ Loan

According to Akintunde Sawyerr, managing director of NELFUND, which manages the students’ loan scheme, 326,000 individuals had applied for the loan as of December 2024.

“So far, we’ve disbursed to 128 tertiary institutions that are eligible. We have disbursed about N18 billion to the institutions. We’ve disbursed about N5 billion in upkeep,” Sawyerr said in Lagos in December 2024.

Challenges

In 2024, the government was focused on enhancing the quality of education through strategic reforms, although implementation remained a challenge.

Many schools, particularly in rural areas, continued to struggle with inadequate infrastructure, poor learning environments, and a lack of resources.

Teacher quality and training was another noticeable challenge in the education space. In 2024, Josiah Ajiboye, the registrar of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), said the council would embark on what he called ‘naming and shaming’ to expose unqualified teachers operating in various schools across the country.

Ajiboye explained that the council had been addressing the issue of unqualified teachers in both public and private schools for over the years and that the exercise had been yielding positive results.

“A large percentage of teachers in public schools about 80 percent are qualified but the same cannot be said of private schools where we have less than 50 percent of qualified teachers,” he said.

There’s a persistent shortage of qualified teachers in certain regions, and many existing educators still face issues like low salaries, limited professional development, and inconsistent teaching standards.

Consequent to the federal government’s introduction of the student loan scheme, economic reforms and petrol subsidies removal, many public universities began to increase fees, citing prevailing economic realities and the need to be able to meet obligations to students and stakeholders in the face of high cost of living.

The University of Lagos, for instance, increased its fees from N26,000 to N100, 750 for students in non-laboratory courses, and from N76,000 to N140, 250 for students offering laboratory courses. Medical students were to pay N190,250.

The university later announced a reduction of N20, 000 across board for returning students and N10, 000 for new students.

This fee hike was witnessed across public universities and even in secondary schools, leaving many parents disillusioned.

Nigeria’s education system faced a crisis with millions of children out of school. According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) report, “In 2024, Nigeria recorded 10.2 million out-of-school children in primary school, and 8.1 million in junior secondary school.”

The report said, “A total of 18.3 million children are out-of-school in Nigeria, which is 15 percent of the global total.”