Stakeholders task FG on proper learning in schools

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Stakeholders in the education sector have asked the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to overhaul the educational system in the country with focus on ensuring that proper learning takes place in schools across the nation.

Some stakeholders who spoke with Nigerian Tribune, lamented the poor learning outcomes, especially at the basic education level and the declining reading culture in Nigeria.

President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Camillus Ukah, said that “to save the soul of Nigeria, reading culture must be returned by every means and forcefully,” saying this should be a preoccupation of the current administration of President Tinubu

He said it was unfortunate that a lot of children who are enrolled in schools today did not receive proper learning, stressing that the essence of education is about improvement and that it is counter-productive if children who are enrolled in schools could not read and write.

Ukah said: “The reading culture is declining unfortunately. The founder of our Association, Chinue Achebe said a nation becomes what it honours. Reading is what should be supported by every organisation because it is about knowledge”.

To get students to learn and to read, he prescribed the concept of ‘One Child, One Book, One Week’, saying “national development is an aggregation of individual’s development; no one can develop without learning.”

“This should be a primary preoccupation of this new government, to pursue proper learning in schools,” he said.

Wife of former governor of Oyo State and Ambassador of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Mrs Bukola Ladoja, had at the ANA conference in 2022 in Abuja, unveiled a reading campaign project tagged: ‘One Child, One Book, One Week’.

Speaking during the launch of the project at the conference, she had lamented that she had been to schools where senior secondary students were unable to spell their names correctly.

She said: “We are here for the Nigerian child; the children need a new orientation. We want to give them a foundation that will enable them to be useful to themselves and the nation at large.”

According to her, the project is for all the schools, be it public or private, saying “we urge everyone to be part of this project which is out to groom the younger generation.

The ‘One Child One Book One Week’ being supported by ANA is a pet project of Mrs Bukola Ladoja, and it is designed to ignite the reading culture among primary and secondary school students in Nigeria.

On her part, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Chief of Education in Nigeria, Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan, noted that three out of every four pupils in Nigerian primary schools are poor in literacy and numeracy.

She noted that the problem must be tackled from the grass-roots level.

“Nigeria has a severe learning crisis with three out of four children being unable to read or to solve a simple math problem.

“This not only hobbles children’s opportunity to learn higher order skills but it’s also fuelling the out-of-school (children) problem through high levels of drop out. So if we want to solve the out-of-school (children) problem, we must solve the quality problem in learning,” she said.

Also, UNICEF representative in Nigeria, Cristian Munduate, said the education sector in Nigeria is faced with many challenges, saying one of these challenges is access to quality learning, which is inhibited by low domestic spending on education resulting in limited school infrastructure and qualified teachers, high level of poverty and social norms not supportive of education especially for girls.

“These challenges are exacerbated by attacks on schools and abduction of learners. Both have made parents fearful of sending their children to school.

“The disruption to education by school attacks has meant millions of children have significantly missed out on learning they would have acquired if they had been in the classroom. More than 10 million children are not in school at the primary level. For those in school, the quality of learning is poor; 75 per cent of primary school age pupils are unable to read with understanding or solve a simple math problem,” UNICEF stated.

Executive Director, Education Rights Initiative, Dr Solomon Udah, called on the Federal Government to overhaul the education sector in the country.

He said there was the need to work with the state governments who are primarily in charge of basic education in order to strengthen the foundation of education in Nigeria. He added that the government should urgently look into the challenge of shortage of qualified teachers and improvement in the teaching and learning environment in schools.

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