Lagos — A National Stakeholders' Forum was held in Abuja, last Friday, where the Minister of Education, Dr. Sam Egwu presented 'The Road map for the Nigerian Education Sector'.

One of the major problems with Nigeria 's education system, observers have said, is the failure of implementation, aggravated by lack of continuity. Every new minister always wanted to prove that he or she had his/her own original ideas on how, as they say, "to move the sector forward."

The tragedy of this is better appreciated when one considers the fact that the country, between 1999 and now, has had an average of one Minister of Education per year, from Olaiya Oni to Tunde Adeniran, Babalola Borishade, Fabian Osuji, Liyel Imoke, Chinwe Obaji, Obiageli Ezekwesili, Igwe Aja-Nwachuku and now, Sam Egwu. One should not even go into the big basket of Ministers of State.

It was therefore commendable, as those sitting within the reporter's earshot also noted, to hear Dr. Sam Egwu, while presenting his roadmap for the Nigerian education sector in Abuja last Friday; publicly acknowledge that "the process of charting the roadmap began with a comprehensive review of previous efforts undertaken by past administrations in order to learn from them."

Not only that, he said: "I believe in building upon what is already in place without reinventing the wheel. Let me take this opportunity to commend the efforts of my predecessors as we found extensive documentation of all their hard work and efforts.

"Through the extensive literature review we discovered that much of the problems in our education sector have been identified and well documented. In addition, many good

recommendations and possible solutions have also been proffered. The missing link was that not as much had been done in terms of implementation."

That remark drew applause from the audience as some nodded in acknowledgement. It is indeed too soon to forget the contribution of former Minister of Education, Mrs. Oby Ezekwesili and her Task Team on the reform of the sector.

As the Chairman of the roadmap implementation committee, Prof. Godswill Obioma made a power-point presentation of the document, their were echoes of Education Management Information System, Vocational Enterprises Institutions (VEIs) and Innovation Enterprises Institutions (IEIs), Operation Reach All Secondary Schools (ORASS), among other features of the Ezekwesili reform programme.

At the 55th National Council on Education (NCE) meeting, held in Abuja in January, Egwu had promised the nation an enduring legacy in terms of producing and delivering a roadmap, within three months, which would be followed to revamp and reposition the education sector.

In a welcome address, delivered on her behalf by the Permanent Secretary in the ministry, Alhaji Sheidu Ozigis, the Minister of State for Education Hajiya Aishatu Jibril Dukku said the promise was fulfilled on Friday, March 20, when Egwu presented the document to Directorate level officers of the Federal Ministry of Education, heads of its parastatals and principals of unity colleges, for their critique and input. Their inputs were incorporated into the document, which was now presented to a larger group at the stakeholders' forum.

The stakeholders included, heads of secondary and tertiary institutions, the academia in general, traditional rulers, civil society groups, non governmental organisations, international development partners, heads of parastatals in the ministry, etc. The large audience also included the Deputy Governors of Ebonyi and Taraba States , Prof Chigozie Ogbu and Alhaji Sanni Abubakar, as well as Commissioners of Education from many other states, who represented their governors.

All those who delivered goodwill messages congratulated Dr. Egwu for coming up with the docunment. The Attah I, Ohinoyi of Ebiraland, Alhaji Ado Ibrahim regretted that the country was producing unemployable children, He said the road map was a food for thought and expressed the hope that those responsible for its implementation would not let the nation down.

Chairman of the House Committee on Education, Hon. Farouk Lawan said the road map was long overdue. According to him, President Yar'Adua's desire was to come up with the plan for the reform of the sector within a short time.

He expressed the hope that the forum would not be another talk shop where problems are discussed, but very little done in terms of implementing the decisions taken. He urged participants to avoid the lazy approach of 'education needs more money' to examine "more prudent and accountable ways of spending allocations."

Mr. Rob Shooter of the British Department for International Development (DfID), who spoke on behalf of the international development partners, expressed the hope that the roadmap is a road to better education that will take the country a giant step forward in achieving the seven-point agenda and Vision 20 20/20.

He however stressed that it is a road that has to be traveled by Nigerians. "But we will travel with you as you make better use of Nigeria 's resources, we will support you with the experience and expertise from around the world. We are happy that there is a road map, there is direction and there is leadership. This is very important."

The Minister said cornerstone of the roadmap is its implementation strategy. The strategy is to use a representative sample of schools and institutions across the country as demonstration projects that will benefit from an intensive and focused implementation of the turn-around strategies, which are the well thought out solutions that have been developed by the best brains in the sector.

The schools are to be selected from each of the geo-political zones and developed as centres of excellence. According to him, the implementation strategy is based on the theory that what works in the representative sample will work in other similar schools and institutions across the country. Simultaneously, state assistance teams will be trained to implement the same turn around strategies in their non demonstration schools and institutions.

Egwu argued that "the reason our efforts have not yielded result in the past is that we tend to take on too much at one time, spread ourselves too thin, and end up expending

resources without making much impact. This time, our approach will be coordinated, focused, intensive and timeline and results driven

"With this strategy we will be able to see noticeable changes in those schools that have benefitted from the intensive training and technical assistance offered by the demonstration initiative within a 12 to 24 month time frame. In other words, we will take all of the best ideas that have been proffered (which we have captured as turn-around strategies), and actually go and apply them in real schools in the field. It is time for us to move from report writing to actual implementation, and that is what this roadmap is designed to accomplish."

On the specific details of the content and layout of the roadmap, Egwu gave four main focus areas to address. These are: Access and Equity, Quality Assurance, Technical and Vocational Education and Training and Funding. The document outlines improvement strategies, turn-around strategies- within each of the sub sectors of education namely basic, post-basic and tertiary.

On Access and Equity, a National campaign on access will be launched to ensure that every single Nigerian child who ought to be in school is in school. "We will also address issues of inequities in the sector - gender, economic, special needs and vulnerable populations."

Standards and Quality Assurance, according to Egwu, encompasses the quality of school infrastructure, teachers, curriculum, assessments, information communications technology, and student life, as well as building and rebuilding classrooms, laboratories, libraries, etc.

Government will also invest in teacher quality development. This plan proposes to embark on intensive recruitment, training and retraining of teachers and improve the conditions of service of teachers.

One of the problems in maintaining high standards, the minister said, is having reliable and valid means of assessing how well students and teachers are performing. "We plan to institute a system of assessing students and teachers so that we can determine the quality of learning and teaching. I have proposed reinstating an assessment at the end of the 6th year so as not to pass students on who have not mastered the requisite basic skills at the primary level.

"We paid attention to the quality of life of our students because it is not enough to have high academic achievement we must also produce good citizens, well rounded individuals, and youth leaders. We propose to revamp character education, invest in counselling, re introduce extracurricular activities, and encourage appreciation of the arts and all those aspects that enrich the school life and result in the education of the whole child.We believe that these kinds of programs will address the issues of indiscipline, cultism and all the various vices that have plagued our schools and institutions in recent years.

To catch up with the rest of the world in terms of technology, the road map makes information communications technology an integral part of not just teaching and learning but also how we carry out the support services within the sector.

The road map is also strong on Technical Vocational Education and Training TVET) to transform Nigerians into highly skilled and competent individuals. It therefore refocuses attention on Vocational Enterprise Institutes and Innovative Enterprise Institutes.

While funding is a priority issue, the minister said the funding challenges in the education sector include, leadership and accountability, inadequate budgetary allocation, inadequate funding of schools, poor management and utilisation of funds. It also recognised that there are problems associated with assessing available funds.

"This issue needs to be resolved with through dialogue with the states and a concerted effort by the Ministry to address the concerns of our state stakeholders. For example, the Education Trust Fund has accumulated unaccessed funds to the tune of N22.6bn in favour of various schools and institutions across the country.

"This situation will no longer be tolerated, especially when our educational institutions are in dire need of funding. It does not make sense that we say we do not have enough funds and then the ones that we have are not being accessed. On this note, I wish to appeal to members of Governing Councils, State Commissioners of Education and Chairmen of State Universal Basic Education Boards to take note of this issue and act expeditiously."

The minister then went on to read out the list of the institutions and states that were meant to access the said fund. The roadmap explores alternative ways of funding including reaching out to other stakeholders in the private sector and seeking partnerships in funding education.

Finally, in order to accomplish all the recommendations of our roadmap, we must take a good look at how we conduct business.

Egwu assured his listeners that "this plan outlines an implementation strategy that is theoretically sound and pragmatic. Our implementation process will be an open and transparent process. We intend to have a project website through which we will publish our efforts, challenges and successes. It will also be a medium to continue to receive your feedback and comments as we go forward.

"This is a work in progress. This document is still in draft form and I must stress the importance of everyone's input and commitment to the success of the plan. I know that some people were already getting worried that we may have completed the plan without their input. I want to assure you that we intend to carry everyone along as everyone is a stakeholder in education."