The positive benefits associated with creating an educated population cannot be over-emphasised. There are tons of studies with evidence to support education as a fundamental path to achieve growth and development in any nation. It is therefore vital to design educational infrastructure in such a way as to maximise the accessibility and effectiveness of the education being delivered.
For any student, a school is a home away from home. Most of their waking hours are spent in schools, especially in current-day Nigeria, where parents spend long hours trying to make a living. The school plays a significant role in shaping a student’s personality and the holistic learning process – helping them to anything and everything in multiple forms from books, teachers, peers and even school environs.
Intuitively, policymakers react to the problem of out-of-school children by calling for more investments in building new schools, more classrooms, and adding more furniture to existing ones. Besides, to improve school enrolment, there has been considerable investment in other programmes, such as feeding programs and provision of free uniforms and textbooks. However, instead of investing in education infrastructure using a strategic approach, policy initiatives are fragmented and in piecemeal. There are several uncoordinated and decentralised efforts both at the national and sub-national levels with policy initiatives driven mainly by ad-hoc needs and limited funding availability.
As of today, no data source or agency can authoritatively quantify government spending on education in Nigeria. Many people confuse the federal government’s (FG) budget as the total expenditure on education by the country. Whereas the FG is only responsible for federal schools, the subnational governments are responsible for the most substantial chunk of teaching and learning, mostly at primary and secondary school levels.
A different approach: What we should be doing
Policymakers need to rethink investment in education infrastructure in Nigeria by using a holistic and evidence-based model to inform their investment decisions.
First and foremost, policymakers, at all levels, need to collect and analyse a vast amount of data on Nigeria’s education system in a manner that has never been done in the country before. There is a need to establish an Education Information Management System to curate all the data gathered and must regularly be updated with new information. Data collection can be under several categories, but the following details are essential;
Demographic trends – student age population growth, territorial distribution of population such as urban and rural, the gender distribution of the school-age population etc. The needs of educational institutions – school capacity, utilities and amenities needed, sanitation requirement, teacher-student ratio, infrastructure conditions in existing schools, etc. Also, labour market skill needs – employees perception of skills supply and shortages, the literacy level of the student, capacity development needs etc.
Secondly, identification of educational challenges is key. Based on the data gathered, policymakers must run an in-depth analysis to reveal broad-based and acute challenges that are affecting learning in Nigeria based on educational level and geographical areas. To accurately identify the problems, the data gathering process must take into account all stakeholders such as the communities, religious organisations, teachers, parents, students etc.
Furthermore, development of criteria to prioritise investments because there is limited funding available to address the challenges in education, policymakers must make good use of the little funds available. Therefore, based on the in-depth review of the data collected, a set of criteria must be put in place to assess and prioritise infrastructure funding proposals coming from different schools. By applying a transparent, data-driven, and holistic set of criteria, the responsible authorities will ensure that selected projects strike an optimal balance between efficiency, equity, and sector-specific needs.
The last step is to monitor the application of the criteria in practice continuously in addition to evaluating the effect of the allocation of funding for investment in education and supporting infrastructure.
Finally, as important as access to education is, policymakers in Nigeria need to focus more on the quality of education using data-driven, evidence-based and multi-faceted model to promote effective and efficient learning for all students across the country.
BISI OGUNWALE
