Nigeria wants to reform its educational system: “In a move to align Nigeria’s education system with global standards, the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa, has proposed a transition to a 12-year basic education structure, replacing the current 9-3-4 model with a 12-4 system….
“Dr. Alausa acknowledged that while the existing 9-3-4 system—which comprises nine years of basic education, three years of senior secondary school, and four years of tertiary education—has its advantages, it also presents challenges, particularly for students struggling to further their education due to financial constraints or knowledge gaps.”
How do you fix that problem of “financial constraints or knowledge gaps”? The minister wants to replace the 9-3 system with continuous 12 years which means you enter at primary 1 and graduate with WASC, implying that primary school common entrance and junior secondary final exams are eliminated. Largely, your primary school morphs into your secondary school, from Primary 1 to WAEC, with no testing or breaks in between!
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I think this is a distraction. Yes, the government should focus on reducing out of school kids, improve education funding, deepen teaching skills, improve welfare of teachers, ensure safety of schools, and do other mundane things. Changing the system this way for kids to stay in school for continuous 12 years where primary and secondary are fused as one is not strategic in my opinion.
Nigeria’s current secondary school educational structure is just fine. It mirrors nearly all modern countries. What is missing is a reform in our university admission system, and that is partly the reason we are having issues at the secondary level.
When that current system was introduced, the argument was this: by breaking the secondary education, some could decide after three years of junior secondary to move into Technical, Science, Art, Commercial, etc in the senior secondary.
In my village school, many kids took the Technical path while some of us took the Science path. Where everything broke apart was in the university admission process where anything not Physics and Chemistry cut-out the Technical students.
Yes, people who made Distinctions in Motor Vehicle Technology or Automotive Tech were not qualified to study any technical field in universities and polytechnics. The next few years, the village phased out the Technical and Commercial lines and everyone was boxed into Art and Science!
Simply, the challenges we see at the secondary school level are partly influenced by the demands of the universities! Unfortunately, this proposal as articulated by the minister does not address the core fundamental issues.
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Your current president has no record of primary and secondary school education, but the minister of state he appointed is proposing a ‘reform’, you cannot make these things up. In their all knowing, they figured out that the problem with the current system is the 3 years of senior secondary, and by merging it together, everything will be stew. And their new additions? You will hear entrepreneurship and skill acquisition. So how does moving from 9-3 to 12 make any difference? They have no answer.
Today’s basic education industry is largely private sector driven, you will hardly find anyone here whose kids attend public primary and secondary schools. In the public school system we currently run, some communities only have primary schools but no secondary schools. Attending secondary school means going from your community to another. The deficits in the basic education space are not too noticeable just because of amalgam of private school owners of various categories and price range, else you would have known that Nigeria has long ago lost the capacity to build schools and fund public education.
Now they are proposing 12 years of basic education when they barely build new public schools, even with growing population. Confusion?