The poor standard of education in our country is a direct mockery of the huge annual budget voted for the sector. It is very clear that the desired results are not been seen and this should bother every one of us. We are repeatedly pained by the nonchalant attitude of our leaders in the struggle to make our education sector better.
There is an obvious depreciation in the quality of education obtainable in Nigeria today when compared to the past. Among the areas of attention are the issues of out-of-school children, promoting adult literacy and special needs education. Currently the Nigeria education system is renowned for its outdated syllabus, inadequate funding, epileptic power supply, poorly motivated staff and substandard facilities.
The federal and state governments should allocate a minimum of 15 per cent of their budget to education in order to get the desired result from the sector. They must also constitute special task forces to manage funds and oversee the infrastructural overhaul of schools.
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We need to look critically at the ICT area for development. This has the potential to harness reading culture among students if properly deployed. It enhances learning and provides students with new sets of skills to further the objectives of long distance learning. It also facilitates and improves training of teachers and equally minimises the costs associated with the delivery of traditional instruction.
Education is the bedrock for any nation’s development and any nation that will survive in this century must not pay lip service to the issue of quality in education. The fact must be acknowledged that education is the only secured pivot on which the rapid and sustainable economy of any nation can be anchored.
Government needs to encourage synergy between the public and private sector so that our students can get the best that they deserve.
In all sincerity, our nation’s regulatory and monitoring agencies must urgently rise to the occasion in the discharge of their official duties in order to bail out our country from the current state of terrible disarray. We no longer need the drama of having schools everywhere whose products are half baked.
Nigeria is ripe for structural measures and policies for enthronement of sustainable acquisition of quality education. One of the surest ways of achieving the positive target is to weed out those identified as rocking the boat of our educational progress and corporate integrity.
Okanlawon Ayoola, okanlawonuthman@yahoo.com
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