It is wisely said that “no country can develop more than the level of her education.” This makes it imperative for every responsible government to take the development of education in the country seriously.
The success of a student is not the sole responsibility of an entity but a joint collaboration of some stakeholders; parents, government and teachers, who have a lot of responsibilities and roles to play in education to make it successful.
It is when these major stakeholders perform their roles effectively that the students can record unblemished success. If any of these aforementioned stakeholders fail in carrying out their responsibility, a lacuna has been created, hence, there is a problem.
Parents responsibilities
Parents have a lot of responsibilities in the education of their children. Home is the first educational institute of a child. It is an informal setting where the parents have the responsibilities to train their children and groom them in preparation for formal education.
When we say parents, we are referring to the father and mother that give birth to a child. The responsibilities of a father are different from that of a mother, where one fails in his or her responsibilities, it reflects on the children. This might be as a result of irresponsibility on the part of the failed parent or death or as a result of divorce. Research carried out on students who don’t do well in school reveals that the majority of them come from broken homes.
The responsibilities of parents continue after their children are enrolled in formal education providing them with all the necessary things they need in school which includes the payment of the school fees and buying them textbooks, uniforms, and other school materials.
The parents should also monitor the activities of their children in school; visiting the school without informing the child and requesting information from the class teacher about the performance of the child. A responsible parent should know the type of friends his or her children keep.
They should check the work done by their children in school every day and make sure they do their assignments. These should not be arrogated to teachers; they are basically the responsibilities of the parents.
Parents should also take it as a responsibility to attend parents-teachers association meetings to avail themselves of the situations in their children’s school and any information as it affects their children.
Responsible parents should be alive to these responsibilities so that their children do not become rogues in school or eventually become dropouts. We must remember that “Education is a quintessential legacy that can be given to a child.”
Many parents nowadays have abdicated themselves from their responsibilities. Some, due to the economic downturn in the country and other frivolous reasons, don’t have time for their children. They forget that an untrained child would not give them peace of mind in old age when they are supposed to rest and eat the fruit of their labor. “Train your child to give you peace of mind.”
To ameliorate the situation, such parents take their children to “special centers” to write their SSCE exams at exorbitant amounts which yield little or no success eventually.
Responsible parents who are alive to their responsibilities and are always there for their children always reap the good harvest. Such children always come out in flying colors and get admitted to higher institutions to further their education.
Government responsibilities
Government at all levels; local, state and federal have vital roles to play in the education of the country. The role of the government is germane as it is in the fore-front of other stakeholders in education and has the capacity to control their activities. If the government slack in its responsibilities it would affect other stakeholders in education.
The government is the major financier of education. They build schools, recruit qualified teachers and other workers in the school community. They are responsible for the prompt payment of the salary of the workers both teaching and non-teaching which includes the accounting clerk, security men, librarian, office assistant, and farm-manager. They should make sure that the number of workers in a school, both teaching and non-teaching are commensurate with the population of the students in such school and the subjects offered.
They also provide the necessary facilities to the school like a library, laboratory, ICT room, school hall, offices for the principal and vice-principal, staff room, sporting facilities and other facilities that would make the school environment conducive for the teaching-learning process to take place effectively. The population of the students in the school should be considered in providing these facilities.
The provision of necessary materials to schools is also the responsibility of the government. The library and the laboratory as well as the ICT room are to be stocked with relevant materials. Other materials for the use of the teachers like a diary, register, chalk, or white-board marker as the case may be, instructional materials and other useful materials that could ease the teaching-learning process are also to be provided.
The welfare of the workers in the school community should be paramount to the government so that they would be dedicated to their duties. They, especially the teachers, should not go to class with divided minds. They should be adequately remunerated, promoted as at when due, and exposed to in-service training, workshops and other forms of motivation that would make the workers dedicated and alive to their responsibilities.
There should also be regular inspections which would serve as checks and balances. This should be for corrective motives and not for victimization or scoring any political mark.
Government should not fail in any of these responsibilities, if they do, a great vacuum is created and would have long-term effects on the education of the country and in the long run on the development of the country.
Teachers responsibilities
When the parents have carried out their responsibilities on their children adequately and the government follows suit, by building schools and providing necessary facilities and materials, as well as a conducive environment that would make the teaching-learning process take place effectively. The salaries and emoluments are paid promptly, they earn their promotions when it is due.
With all the aforementioned achieved, it behooves every teacher to be dedicated and perform their duties to reciprocate the investment of the government in them hence, there should be results. They should be punctual in school and attend their classes. All the records should be updated.
Students should be coming out in flying colors in their exams. In this way, public schools are to be made attractive to the people; they should be encouraged to enroll their children in public schools.
Teachers are supposed to get themselves updated, especially in this era of the internet. There are various online educational skills that are useful for the online teaching and learning process. They must be abreast of the development in the society.
Teaching is a noble profession hence, teachers should not involve in any unwholesome, immoral behavior. They should not be involved in any form of examination malpractice. Their interactions with the students should be minimal to earn respect from them.
The decadence
Education in Nigeria, especially primary and secondary education requires urgent attention which if not nipped in the board might degenerate to an unexpected level. Primary and secondary education are the foundation stages of education that need to be concretized and taken with all seriousness. If the foundation is weak, the structure built on it cannot stand.
It is discovered that most of these schools lack the basic facilities that are needed for the smooth running of an educational institution. There are no enough teachers to teach the students in primary and secondary schools. Corp members, who most of them are not trained to teach, are substituted for trained teachers across the country, especially in public secondary schools. How do we expect to get results here?
Most of the schools are not provided with furniture for the learners. The classrooms in some schools are dilapidated and not conducive for learning. The teachers who are expected to dress corporately to school do not sit in corporate offices.
Teachers in our primary schools are not enough to teach the pupils in the schools effectively. These pupils are expected to write an external exam (common entrance) on the subjects and the topics they have never been taught. This would qualify them for secondary school education. This leads to malpractice even at that elementary level of education; the pupils would want to pass at all costs to go to secondary school.
Many schools don’t have standard laboratories and libraries. Imagine a secondary school without a standard laboratory and no physics and chemistry teachers. How are the science students in such a school expected to record success in exams? Or a school where there are no Literature-in-English and Yoruba teachers. How are the art students of such schools expected to achieve their ambition of becoming lawyers or journalists?
The students in these schools are expected to pass all the subjects by the relevant authorities without minding whether there are teachers to teach them or not. The authorities in such a school would be at the receiving end. They are coerced into involving in unwholesome activities during the exam to save their jobs.
There have been several threats that the promotion of teachers would be measured on the performance of students that are denied basic facilities that could make them excel in their studies and ease the teaching-learning process.
The teachers that are not enough to teach all the subjects offered in the schools also serve as the school’s account officer, farm manager, office assistant, store-keepers, laboratory attendants, and librarians, even in some schools as janitors. When the available teachers are overloaded, how can we get the best out of them or how will they be dedicated? We cannot be wiser than those that designed this.
There must be specialization and division of labor in our schools. A situation where a teacher trained for teaching Yoruba language is assigned to teach English language does not augur well. Or an accounting teacher is substituted to teach mathematics is a misnomer.
The government knows what to do; we have to be apolitical when it comes to education. Let’s think of the basic needs in our schools. Enough of building “world-class structures” without competent teachers or needed facilities in the schools. What sense is there in a library without a single textbook? Or an ICT room without an ordinary tablet not to talk of laptop. In this computer age, every school should have access to the internet if we are serious with the education of our children.
Let’s discuss the security of the school compound. With the level of insecurity in the country, every school is supposed to be fenced and security men provided. The reverse is the case; many primary and secondary schools are not fenced and might not even have security men. With this, the students are free to go out at will and are also prone to attacks from intruders as experienced in the northern parts of the country.
Some parents also fail in their responsibilities to their children; they would not pay their fees, buy books for them and even see to their progress academically. They expect the teachers to monitor their children for them. This is why some students are not serious with their education. Many end up as drop-outs or fail-outs. Parents should know that their children spend just six hours out of the twenty-four hours in school, while the remaining hours are spent with them at home.
On the part of the teachers, the conditions of the service might even demoralize the dedicated ones among them. A teacher that is overloaded with workload and doesn’t receive his or her promotion as at when due. A level 14 teacher who receives a level 12 salary for years. How does such a teacher expect to give his best to the students? Or a teacher that is unable to provide for his family. How is he expected to be dedicated without thinking of how to carry out his responsibilities at home?
Let the government and the parents carry out their responsibilities hence, an enabling environment would be created for teachers to perform. I am not excluding teachers from contributing to the decline in education, but the condition of service is enough for a lazy or undedicated teacher as a defense for not performing.
Let’s always ask ourselves this salient question, “is this the type of education I passed through?” Most of our leaders nowadays benefited immensely from Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s free education where everything was provided for them for free. There were free textbooks for every subject, metal chairs and lockers, big notes, and mathematical sets and teachers were available for all subjects.
The examining bodies also contribute to the decadence we experience in education in this country. I can say that reliability is not in the dictionary of these examining bodies. In the last few years, there were no papers that were written that the candidates would not have seen ahead of time.
The candidates would just need to subscribe to some sites that are specially designed for that purpose. The questions and the answers are already waiting for them on the sites. I give kudos to some higher institutions that don’t use SSCE results as a criterion for the selection of their students during the post-jamb exercise.
The examining bodies need to check themselves and scrutinize those in charge of their questions. This was so rampant in 2019 that WAEC sanctioned many secondary schools and fined them #250,000.00 instead of looking inward to nip the problem in the board. This is preposterous of an internationally recognized examining body.
This is having negative effects on the students. When they know that questions and answers are already provided for them on those sites, they would not bother to stress themselves reading anything. This would have multiple effects on them if they are able to get to higher institutions. Many are thrown out of school in their first years when they are unable to cope.
Those in the lower classes also would not be serious with their studies any longer. That’s why truancy and other vices are on the rise day in and day out, especially in our public schools across the country. They display all forms of rude behavior to the school authority and disrespect the teachers.
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Who is to blame?
Albeit there are three major stakeholders that contribute to the success of learners; the government, the parents, and the teachers. Teachers are always at the receiving end here; they are the culprits for the failures of the government and the parents to perform their responsibilities.
A parent that doesn’t have time and fails to monitor his children’s performance in school, and in the end, the children don’t do well in the exam, it’s the fault of the teacher. When a parent slacks in his responsibilities to his children and it’s having negative effects on the academic performance of the children, it is the teachers that are not doing their jobs.
It is a known fact that the government is responsible for the recruitment of teachers into schools. In a school that doesn’t have physics and chemistry teachers and the science students in such schools perform woefully, the blame is always on the school authority in most cases. The principals are invited to defend the performance of their students in the exam.
Whereas, a responsible government should query a school with a similar case that has the science students performing excellently. The government should query how the science students of a school that doesn’t have physics and chemistry teachers perform well in the exam, especially in those subjects where they don’t have teachers.
The government is a stakeholder that has control over the other two stakeholders. They are in the best position to guide the parents and the teachers where they have gone wrong. Government has the capacity to instruct teachers on what to do and what they shouldn’t do. They can hire, correct, punish, motivate and fire to make things work in the school system.
Parents can also be advised or sensitized by the government on their responsibilities to their children. They can be involved in the school system to make things work effectively.
The examining bodies also carry a certain percentage of the blame. They play a vital role in determining the success of the learners and their decision on a particular learner is supposed to be reliable anywhere in the world. That’s why it is imperative to give accurate and reliable reports about a learner’s performance in the exams.
Exam malpractice is on the increase year in and year out, especially question leakage. This should be thoroughly investigated and the bad eggs in their establishment should be shown the way out or be prosecuted. The internal exams of some schools are even more reliable than those of the examining bodies because the students would not have access to the questions until the day of the exam. The reverse is the case in our external exams, most of the questions leak out before the papers are written.
Addendum
If education is taken seriously in our country, many problems in society like insecurity, unemployment, and poverty might be reduced to the barest minimum. “Education properly used could lead to the elimination of poverty.”
It is high time this decadence is checked before it creeps into our tertiary institutions. Kudos is given to the Academic Staff Union of Universities and other stakeholders in our tertiary institutions who not only fight for their remunerations but also stand as forces fighting for the provision of infrastructure and other facilities to our higher institutions.
Oyelekan is an author, publisher, and content creator.
