Alhaji Muhammad Ibn Musa is the National President of the All Nigerian Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPPS). He shares in this exclusive interview with TUNBOSUN OGUNDARE an insight into why it will be difficult for Nigerian students to defeat Ghanaians in the West African Senior School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE), and why it is not all cases of exam malpractice are actually real, among other issues. Excerpts:
HOW do you see Ghanaian students winning the top three WAEC’s Int’l Awards for the past two years in a row despite Nigeria presenting almost three quarters of the entire candidates for the exam in the sub-region?
This issue you raised is a serious one and if I have my way, I will not like to talk about it since it involves all Nigerian teachers.
Your position as the National President of ANCOPPS has made you the most qualified to comment on the matter?
Well, I cannot place the fault on one entity. I can’t say the fault is solely from the principals or the teachers. Though, they both shared in the blame, even the governments, parents and students also have their respective blames. The students’ attitude towards learning for example is something else.
Certainly, we have many of them who are academically and morally sound, but the truth is that most of them don’t really realise that they are competing with their counterparts from other four member countries of the examination body. Many just want a credit pass in their subjects and once they are able to achieve that, they feel they are on the top of the world. However, permit me to use the paradox that ‘you can only succeed in taking a donkey to the river, but you can’t force it to drink water. This is how many of them are. Truly, teachers are doing their best but students and also their parents are not helping matters.
Where do the parents stand in the blame?
For instance, in a situation where a child is not properly prepared for an examination like the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) and the parents are not bothered about it, what do we expect if not failure? Many parents just want their children to complete their secondary education as fast as possible without passing through all the classes. Many of them enroll their children when they are still under-aged and also ensure they jump classes. Many also aid their children in exam malpractice.
This is why even in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) conducted by the Joint Admissions Matriculation Board (JAMB), you find an SS3 student scoring 72 out of 400 marks. The question is which of the universities such a student aims to attend? More so, that is the same student, who wants to sit for WASSCE. What result should we expect from such a student? So, the issue is that most students are simply not prepared to pass with high grades in WASSCE. We have online lessons meant for the students but many of them won’t bother to visit those sites let alone study through these platforms
Even when some of them have expensive phones, about 99.5 per cent of what they are browsing doesn’t have any bearing on their studies or examinations and their parents are not bothered. In the olden days, students came home with lots of assignments during holidays, but such practice is no longer there today, especially in public schools.
Then what do we consider as the fault of teachers including principals in this matter?
I observed this issue you raised critically when we were in Liberia last month during the 73rd Annual General meeting of WAEC where the International Awards of Excellence were presented to the top three candidates with best results in last year’s school-based WASSCE. They were all from Ghana.
Also, last year when we went for the same meeting in Sierra Leone, Ghana also produced the best three candidates in the 2023 edition.
In fact, two years earlier, when we went to Gambia for the same meeting, out of the best three, Nigeria managed to produce one, a female student from Plateau State, and the rest two were equally from Ghana.
So, teachers including principals now need to understand that our students are not only competing among themselves in Nigeria but with their peers from other four member countries of WAEC and then prepare them well for the exam.
What in your view do you think Ghana is doing differently?
If you ask yourself how many secondary schools are in Ghana that its students are doing so well in the examination, you will realise that the country operates a kind of specialised secondary schools. If you are a science student living in Ghana, you already know the kind of secondary school to attend and likewise the commercial or arts students. However, in Nigeria, we don’t have such arrangement; we are rather running comprehensive schools. A private school with just two classrooms for example in Nigeria will present candidates for SSCE. So, there are lots of issues. Parents have their fault as I had earlier said, so also the students and the teachers.
Now let’s look at where the teachers are at faults?
At times, we may not cover the syllabus and when we do, how deep we dig into the subjects. You are given just 45 minutes to take a class but you use about 20 to 30 minutes out of the time to discuss nonimportant issues like partisan politics that are not relevant to the topic of the day.
Meanwhile, the students on their part will be happy that you are discussing politics with them instead of teaching them the subjects. They are always interested in things that can offer them quick money. Did you know that there are students who will never resume with their peers after holidays until their teachers start looking for them and the parents are not bothered, even when they are in terminal classes? This practice is common in the northern part of the country.
What does it portend to ANCOPPS that Ghanaian students have repeatedly been winning the top three places in WASSCE in the sub-region?
It means a lot to us and we should all begin to reflect on it. That no Nigerian candidate was among the top three with best results for two consecutive years in an examination that we presented almost three quarters of the entire candidates in the sub-region speaks volume.
Now, another edition is ongoing with more than 1.9 million Nigerian candidates. If out of this huge number, we can’t produce the top three again, we must all be more worried. We have actually asked WAEC, Nigeria, to use its research department to do research on this matter.
Another issue is that most of our teachers don’t go for marking of the answers’ scripts. They don’t see such exercise as something that can give them quick and big money. Whereas, teachers who are involved in marking scripts of either WAEC or NECO examinations will certainly be about 80 per cent better than their counterparts who don’t participate in such exercises. This is because teachers who engage in marking these exams’ scripts will know better about the exact answers expected to provide for every question. They will also teach based on that experience in class but the issue is most of them don’t participate in such.
Is that all that there is to making ahead?
No. I will also add that most state governments have stopped organising professional development workshops and courses for teachers. Many of them don’t fund such exercises again. So, it will be difficult to get a better result if we approach an issue the same way now and then.
Our teachers must improve on their mode of teaching and knowledge of their subjects and every other important thing.
Now that WAEC and NECO are gradually migrating to paperless examinations as the Minister of Education has recently announced, we need to ask ourselves if we are truly prepared for the migration.
For example, let’s assume the government provides the computers, how about maintenance? Definitely, the students or parents will bear a lot of burden. So, are the parents prepared? This, to me, is part of the political hypocrisy of our free education policy in Nigeria. Almost every state claims to be operating free education but the question is how many of them provide things that are required in the schools to make the system truly free.
What then is your reaction to some states that compel teachers in the public schools to give automatic promotion to their students whether they pass examinations or not.
Really, this is a big problem in the educational system. Recently, the Federal Government talked about 12 straight years of basic education. We should ask ourselves what type of policy is that? What has happened to the 6-3-3-4 which we have not actually explored its content. For the system, it is expected that if a child stops school after JSS3, that student must have learnt a particular vocation to grow with. However, what do we parade, technical schools without workshops – technical schools where students only learn carpentry on paper, because even when they have simple broken chairs at homes, they go to carpenters in their communities for repairs. Equally, those who learnt mechanical engineering cannot change ordinary car batteries let alone fixing complex issues.
Do you think something is wrong with our curriculums?
Our curriculum is not that functional. Functional curriculums combine the practical works with theoretical works across subjects. That is how it’s done even across the neighbouring Francophone countries. Whether you like it or not, you must learn a trade before graduation. That is why you see any teacher from those countries teaching in our secondary schools having one vocational skill or the other that they are good at.
Teachers ought to be mastery of their subjects. They don’t just teach theory, they teach practical works unlike here where we do more theoretical work.
Go to our science laboratories, whether biology, or physics, or chemistry, you will find our students clustering around a single apparatus to learn. The implication of this is that they are prone to write the same answers word for word in an examination and once this happens, they will be accused of collusion, which is an examination malpractice as far as WAEC or NECO is concerned. And that is part of why some candidates faced problems with withheld or cancelled results, or the entire school being de-recognised by the examination bodies for malpractice. Some malpractices are not always malpractice in the real sense of it.
Can you elaborate on this, that some malpractices are not malpractice in the real sense of it?
What I’m saying is that many students like cramming, especially for the purpose of passing examinations and once they get into the exam halls, they just pour down what they have crammed just like many others as their answers and because they only clustered round when they are in class, they will write down the same things, cram them and pour them down during examination word for word.
For example, a school has only two sets of computers for about 70 students, who offer the subject, how will they manage the situation if not by clustering during practicals?
If they find a likely question that has been treated in class, the tendency for them to write the same answer word for word is high. What do you expect WAEC to call or treat such practice if not malpractice because two candidates are not expected to write the same answer for the same question word for word not to talk of when many students are involved.
How best do we address all these issues?
At the various levels of government, we need to look at our education system holistically. When was the last did we reviewed our national curriculum? We are only changing the cover and not the content and then reprint and not reverse. We have lots of things to do.
We need to appoint capable hands to positions of authority in the sector – those, who are grounded and know where the shoes are pinches. Teachers and students must also be consulted in matters relating to them. It is not about copying other peoples’ policies and adopting them without considering the peculiarities and reality of our system or environment. We should stop pretending as if we don’t know what to do to solve our societal challenges.
Back to WASSCE results, students of Federal Government Colleges in the olden days are often among the WAEC Int’l Award winners, what do you thing is responsible for change in narrative?
It is simply because of the rotten system. Federal Government colleges are supposed to be modeling the state-owned schools. That was the practice in those olden days. Like in the Northern part, we have unity colleges in large numbers, but how effective they are is another issue. They only appear to be elitis schools. How competent are their teachers? How many times do Nigerian teachers generally go for training on the job? There are lots of issues to talk about. Even at that, hope is not lost. We can still turn around the tide positively.
Now, what is your message to students, teachers, parents as well as your colleagues concerning this year’s May\June WASSCE?
The principals should not forget to bear in mind that they are chief examiners and supervisors in their respective schools. They should know that if anything like malpractice happens in their schools, they will be held accountable and therefore should live up to their expected roles.
Teachers should reflect on what can help students pass the examination by covering the syllabus. If they have missed lessons, they should find a way to cover up. The students should be more serious this time around. They should know that the examination ties and largely determines their fate for further studies. They need to study hard so as to pass well and compete with their peers from other countries.
Let the parents also do their part. They need to encourage and support their children to study well. They should not think that they don’t have much to lose since it is the government that has paid for the examination and not from their pockets. So, let everybody do what is expected of him or her. Let the government also make quality and quantitative education accessible to Nigerian students.
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