Let me begin this piece using a borrowed phrase from Albert Einstein “Education is not the learning of facts but the training of the mind to think”. It is a truism that no nation develops beyond the capacity of education it offers her populace. Our education system in Oyo state has become dysfunctional; it’s in an abysmal state of ineffectiveness. Education is designed to provide systematic advancement. It’s said that education is not preparation for life; education is life itself, that’s why it’s extremely important to get a proper education build on a strong foundation.
The present government must deem it fit, to give proper recognition to education as the basic building block of our society.
Education remains very central and essential to the development of any society, take education out, it means only one thing, you have killed development. Educational efficiency is the foundation for society survivals, while an effective educational system is a central key for individual success. To catch up with the rest of the world, we need education system that is enlightened, global competitive and self-reliance, education that can fend for needs our dear states by using the brain and hand of citizens of our pacesetter state to invent technology that is best suitable for our environment, instead of already made imported ideas that our state currently rely on to combat all our needs. We must aim above the pass mark to address the need of time.
And it is from this perspective that I call on Engineer Seyi Makinde to place more emphasis on education. Education that would be a pacesetter for others to follow cannot be achieved through the free education system. Oyo state doesn’t have the resources to pursue free education that can change our world view. Every parent, whose desires is to give good and qualitative education to their wards, must be ready to pay at least a token to supplement government efforts. That way, the purpose of education won’t be defeated. Being educated is to critically evaluate, imagine and create. This way, we will able to create for ourselves, solves our problems and lay a foundation for a generation to comes, it’s by so doing that we can boldly say, yes, we have begun a rebuilding process.
In 1970, our dear state was a destination for UNESCO fellowship, African postgraduate students and early career students from all over Africa’s trooped to study in our knowledge-driven tertiary institutions, the likes of University College, now the University of Ibadan and Obafemi Awolowo University was a preferred choice. However, today, this is not the case, from the dilapidated facilities to the quality of teachers in our schools, from kindergarten to secondary schools level, and not to talk of higher institutions of learning, the quality of teachers has continued to drop in a geometrical proportion.
Without sounding immodest, Education remains the key to everything, from social economic development, capacity building, security to economy booms, all lies within the corridors of education. Education makes people capable of doing new interesting things that can go a long way to improves human conditions and standards of living.
Therefore, to address these problems head-on, Engr. Seyi Makinde must declare state of emergency in our educational system, by constituting a very distinguished committee on education devoid of political jobbers to carry out critical evaluation to ascertain the situations on ground, help to revitalized our education systems and developed education strategy in other to close gaps in our curriculum with modern world , if truly we mean well for our dear state, we can’t avoid political populism.
How can our public education be reformed and teacher re-skilled, and rights-sized to provide global base competitive knowledge and earn the public trust? instead of what is presently obtainable in our various schools from elementary and secondary as services.
One question I could possibly mutter is whether or not is that is this the state whose education once pride Africa continent, and housed the best University college and the University of Ife now Obafemi Awolowo University and produced many firsts, not only in Nigeria but Africa? unfortunately, many of those schools we heard of while growing up have fallen into a state of disrepair, and are nothing like they were in their heyday.
When education was a significant pillar of our society and held in high altitude. The western government under chief Obafemi Awolowo invested a lot of money in the education sector, then, Oyo state produced many firsts who compete on a global scale. There is a huge gap between then and now, for instance, Our secondary schools were better endowed, had excellent amenities, and were staffed with intellectual driven teachers, custodians, instructors, cooks, and librarians. The likes of Ibadan Grammar School, Ibadan, Government College, Ibadan, Obaseeku High School, Eruwa, Olivet High School, Oyo and Oluyole High school, Ibadan were built with the proceeding of cocoa to provide educational excellence to an indigene of western Nigerian’s and beyond. The evidence was the difference in class of citizens we had then and now. Undoubtedly, These schools produce a remarkable generation of thinkers that had continued to compete on a global scale. The likes of Wole Soyinka, Grace Alele Williams, Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Gamaliel Onosode, Wande Abimbola, Irele Abiola, Prof. S. A. Olatunji (The first professor in Ibarapa land) carved and honed their intellectual prowess from public school.
Today, the reason there are subtle competitions for irrelevant things among youth and why Internet fraudulent is on the rise is that education we have today is like a snake without a venom.
Some of the big names we heard in our society today were the product of public schools not only in Oyo state bit all over Nigeria. These individuals, their achievement showcase what good education could yield if well planned and managed effectively. Modern systems of Education goes beyond the building of classrooms. What is the essence of a building, without capacity building?
Undoubtedly, there is a nexus between development and education. We should always remember that getting a good education is imperative in today’s society as it is a foundation of any working society. It’s only if our leader view education as a profitable endeavor and enablers of a competitive economy, they will begin to see education as a worthy endeavor, worthy investing in it.
Therefore, the first task for Engr. Seyi Makinde is to appoint a team player who is vast inexperience, foresight and has an understanding of how modern education system works to oversee the ministry of education. We cannot avoid to reward party loyalist and appealing to the interests of the vested interest, thereby placing this important ministry in the hands of an unqualified politician.
My Recommendations is as follows
1.Placing more emphasis on the quality of teachers
The quality of our public schools can be improved by attracting the best and brightest graduating students from within and outside Oyo state.
The government needs to focus their attention on hiring and training teachers with at least a good secondary level qualification and post-secondary level qualification. The government should encourage the best graduating students to become teachers in our public schools. This way, we can begin the process of building a new foundation. To achieve this, the government must invest in our education to make it attractive by passing into law policies and government actions that will address the recurrent issues of non-payment of teachers basic salaries, arrears.
An attractive career and pay structure should be used as an incentive for all teachers to improve their performance. These incentives can also be used to recognize and reward teachers. Remembered, a hungry mind is an angry mind, therefore, Governments should ensure that teachers earn at least enough to lift their families above the poverty line and make their pay competitive with comparable professions. To encourage qualified and multi-talented and highly skills individuals to teaching professional, government should block loops hole and reinvest in education by establishing other remuneration packages like subsidizing teachers medical bills, adequate compensation, bonus pay, good housing scheme, subsidizing utility’s fee that would enable our teachers live a comfortable life before and after their retirement like their professional colleagues abroad.
2. The government should ensure swift passage of needed bills to Improve Teaching and Teachers Impact
How can we solve the Oyo state learning crisis and how do we prepare young people for the 21st-century marketplace? Oyo State House of Assembly needs to activate policies that would help to address the vast shortfall and fill the gap in our educational policy. It’s imperative that OYSHA collectively work with the executive to bring back qualitative education through swift passage of needed bills and helping the executive to facilitate out to map out ways to bring up stronger policies and governmental actions towards strengthening the public education system in Oyo state. Also, Executive can set up a working committee that would work out modalities between the government and relevant private organization towards implementation of strategic policy that would help address the gap in infrastructural deficit and makes provisions for laws and policy that would boost and the support of inclusive and flexible curriculum strategies designed to meet the learning needs of all children. Lawmakers should focus on the swift passage of laws that could boost, secure strong learning foundation skills, this would prepare students mentally and prepared them for greater tomorrow. It is important for curriculum expectations to match learners’ abilities, as overambitious curricula limit what teachers can achieve in helping children progress. It’s no longer a news that most of our classrooms need urgent intervention in terms of our renovations, staffing and provision of basic amenities such as chairs and tables, modern learning material (Projector, scanner, photocopy machine, Public Address systems) laboratories needs urgent upgrade and schools need independent power supply, this could be best achieved using solar power grid. In modern society, schools were endowed with an independent power supply to ensure continuous learning process.
Also, OYSHA should pass into law, laws that would be made it a punishable offense for politicians to send their children to school abroad or private institutions within Nigeria before and after office, this will lead to more concerted efforts towards improving education and ensure our schools were built to provide capacity building. There are many challenges in teaching and I think without good capacities building and some experience, building structure alone can’t address the whole problems.
4. Governments should improve teachers governance policies to address the problems of teacher misconduct.
Government must step up its disciplinary measures to address case of abuse of privilege by teachers such as absenteeism, lateness to work, immoral dressing, use of foul language, and using classroom for private business such as making sure they are not overburdened with their private hustling/ private duties during the school hours ( buying and selling of goods or during the school hour) and while ensuring that students are not molested and used to hawks goods. Also, gender-based violence in schools.
5. Investing in Education by Reducing Government Overhead cost
The governments should invest in improving access to qualitative education from elementary to secondary education and enlarge the pool of good teacher candidates.
It’s not enough for Engr. Seyi Makinde to donate his entire monthly payment to teacher’s pension, instead, he should map out strategies and modalities between the state assembly, private organization and the executive arms of government to ensure swift passage of law that will reduce the current pays of all public office holders, reduce government overhead cost and abolish security vote, cut off unnecessary allowance and reinvest it in education. The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership
6. Partnering with relevant stakeholders, international and allied organizations to provide Teachers Continuous Training.
All teachers from elementary to secondary schools need continues learning platform to receive bimonthly nor quarterly training to enable them to reposition themselves, update themselves of new teaching methodology, have access to materials and other learning resources so as to develop new teaching strategies and methodology, strengthen their teaching skills and adapt to changes, a new changes that may arise either as a result of new government policy or update of new curriculum and meet the learning needs of students and help prepare young people for the 21st century marketplace.
All teachers both newly recruited and those already in the systems needs quarterly training. Before resumption of a new school term, teachers need to undergo good quality pre-service teacher education programme, this would help in building their capacity and prepared them psychologically to enable them absorbs mental stress and any challenges that may arise in the course of teaching.
Therefore to key into new global practice, Oyo state Ministry of education, and schools need to partner with relevant organization towards making policy statements. In the western world, schools usually partner with relevant organization in a form of knowledge transfer, student and lecturer exchange, training, material and resources donations this would help boost the image of our schools at the same times, it will help students to have access to scholarship, scholarly material that would help student to compete for anywhere in the world.
5. Encouragement of Early Retirement of Unperformed Teachers From Service and Quarterly Retraining of Those in Service.
To rejuvenate our education system, new blood must be injected at all levels from the primary school, secondary schools, technical college and the higher institutions of learning, based on merit. This will be impossible unless the aging and untrainable minds masquerading themselves as teacher encouraged to take early retirement from the service of nation-building, according to Mark Twan, “Continues improvement is better than delay perfection”. Our schools need teachers, and lecturers who can perform in today’s work environment with the basic knowledge of IT, and the ability to use search engines like Google, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to aid teaching instead of aged, dirty and outdated materials given to students years in- years out as handout and textbook by our professors and lecturers. Anybody who still upholds the believes that no students can score 100% of allotted mark in course or subject had no business teaching or lecturing in the first place, and such person belongs to the medieval era or better still, stone age and has no business being in our classroom.
6.Educational Regulation and Enabling Environment.
Engr. Seyi Makinde through the office of the commissioner for education should work out policies statement and laws that would enable government set standard for private individuals who have gone into the business of establishing a school or those hoping to. The government should revoke the license of underperforming mushroom schools and university within our state, what we have as private schools today is nothing but glorified semi-public schools without basic amenities, but charges exuberant fees. We need a school that can compete with Harvard, MIT, LSE, private schools abroad and the rest, not school that will derive glory from outsmarting not too performing schools from the Niger Republic, Cameroon, and the Benin Republic.
7. Rejuvenations of curriculums to international standard
Our curriculum from elementary level to tertiary institutions are outdated, we need curriculums that is structured along with global competitiveness with sound practicals, not drawing, labeling and dissecting of lizard and cockroach. Here, the service of an international company will be much needed. They are the employer of labour, they have the technical knowledge to then around things with a short period. Being the employer of labor, they know which knowledge is profitable, hence they can assist us to structure our education system along this line, while mentoring students to become international material and already made from school to job, without the necessarily undergoing additional retraining as we have today.
8. The need to Key into Asian, China systems of Education
British system of education has failed us woefully. We need to copy Asian and China systems of education where student research work especially those in engineering field would be focused mainly on our nations need in all facets of our life, this way, we can grow what we need locally without resolved to a foreign product. In the word of Nelson Mandela, “Education is the great engine of development, China and other developed nations had keyed into this vision statement a long time ago, and it has continued to serve them right. It’s through the art of creating small things, our state can learn how to improve on it and build bigger things for our nation.
Finally, No nation can get it right, unless she gets her education right, to eradicate poverty and all forms of social vice from our public space, we need to get our education systems right. Development can’t coexist where there is no right education.
This is neither the time to gloat nor carry away with the euphoria of victory, It’s time to rebuild our state to make it truly the pacesetter. In the word of Maxwell, The world needs a leader who uses their influence at the right time for the right reason.
Conclusively, Malala Yousafzai opined that “One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change a nation”. If you want to destroy any nation without war, make education an impossible endeavour among the younger generations.
Adediji Abdul-Wasiu currently writes from Delta
adedijiwasiu@gmail.com
