Leadership (Abuja)
20 November 2008
editorial
For the past seven years, candidates' performance in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) has been abysmally poor. Each year has been worse that the preceding one, resulting in the failure of over 83% of millions of Nigerian candidates for the exam this year. This trend ought to worry parents, teachers, school proprietors and the leaders of this nation. But are they worried?
It is likely that WAEC has devised ways to check exam malpractice, leading to the failure of those that would have cheated. Poor funding of education will, however, remain the main culprit. Without a strong foundation in primary school, a child can hardly make it at the secondary or tertiary level. With the steady decline of education for probably the past 30 years, poorly educated students have made poor teachers. It's a vicious circle. Teachers do not teach and students do not learn.
Now that the 2009 budget is being prepared, shouldn't more attention be given to education? Efforts to revive public schools will entail hiring adequate and qualified teachers, paying teachers much more and equipping public schools better than private schools
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Wise counsel, Leadership. A govt that cares less about the poor always mortgage the future of its youth. India is a good example of a country that puts premium on the education of all its citizens, Brahmins and Untouchables, alike. The monies that the Nigerian govt should have allocated to basic needs of the common man such as schools and health clinics are been allocated to buy posh cars for members of the House of Reps. Whereas, as far back as the mid 1940s, a significant portion of India's annual budget went into education and as far back as the… [Read Full Text]