STUDENTS' ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND THE CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM

Transcription

1 STUDENTS' ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AND THE CRISIS OF CONFIDENCE IN THE NIGERIAN EDUCATION SYSTEM By Nwagwu. C. C (Ph.D.) Institute of Education, University of Benin, Benin-City. Abstract In many African countries, the political response to the social demand for education has led to overcrowded classrooms, double sessions, and overstretched teachers and facilities. With political and social instability, economic recession and consequent government inability to adequately supply needed funds, teachers and infrastructure to cope with the increased student enrolments, the quality of learning outcomes and standards attained by graduating students have become questionable and of national concern. Nigerian students' results in the Secondary School Certificate Examination and the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Examinations were used to show a serious decline in students performance over the years. Worsening cases of examination malpractice, indiscipline, cultism and high failure rates of over 50% of enrolled candidates have led to loss of public confidence in the schools, and there is a vigorous search for strategies to remedy the crisis situation. The lessons that could be learnt by other developing countries from the Nigerian experience were discussed. Introduction In the three decades , there was an impressive expansion of the education system of many African countries. This resulted from a greater awareness of the benefits of modern education to the individual and its role in the social and economic development of the nation. Coupled with the high rates of population increase which for many African countries exceeded three per cent per annum, the social demand for education and the resultant expansion in enrolments have significant implications in terms of the availability and management of both human and material resources for education. UNESCO (1991) noted that although the trend was a world-wide phenomenon, the impact on the future development of education in the poor countries was quite serious. Many African governments and peoples have an abiding faith in the efficacy of education as an instrument for social reconstruction and economic development. They believe that selfreliance can only come about when there is education for all and abundant supply of skilled manpower. Bereday (1968) observed that distinguished economists had confirmed the conviction long held by educators that poor countries would become rich only if they invested heavily in education. It would then appear that many African countries have allowed their education systems to expand and grow at all levels without much planning, co-ordination or control and now they are incapable of funding the system in order to maintain established standards and achieve the expected results. In this paper, the experience of Nigeria will be used to illustrate how the managers of an education system can lose grip of the control of inputs, processes and outputs because of the snowballing pressures upon both the education system and the socio-economic system. It has

2 become an issue of standards and quality in education as judged from the performance of students in public examinations, their general behaviour and character development. Then there is the public perception of the school system in terms of its living up to expectations. The general verdict is that there is growing loss of confidence in the system because of the many crises that plague it and the appalling academic performance of students. Consequently, rich parents are searching for alternatives to the public schools and they are prepared to pay huge sums of money to patronize good private schools or to send their children to other countries with better organized schools. Unfortunately, neither the governments nor poor parents are able or even willing to pay more for education. Certainly, in the view of Bereday (1968, p.9) "Financing education is an underdeveloped and unimaginative enterprise". There is therefore the big dilemma of how to improve the school system and raise public confidence in it and its products. Students' Academic Performance Students' learning can be evaluated in many different ways, but in a developing country like Nigeria where about 40 percent of the adult population are illiterate, parents use the performance of their children in public examinations to pass judgement on the schools and teachers. To them, the logic is a simple one. The schools are supposed to be staffed by good teachers and supplied adequate facilities and instrumental materials. It is the responsibility of government to ensure through such provisions and regular inspection or supervision that effective teaching and learning go on in the schools. The task of parents is to send children to school and pay whatever fees and levies are charged by the institutions. Though many parents acknowledge shortages of funds, teachers and infrastructures in the schools and their own inability to buy all the required books and other learning materials for their wards, yet they strongly believe that if the students perform badly in their examinations, the teachers and administrators have not done their job well and should take most of the blame. Unfortunately, there are many factors that help to determine the academic performance of students. However, the level of education and awareness of many parents does not enable them to participate in such complex theoretical arguments or discussions. For such parents and the general public, the students' performances in recent times give cause for ala-m and school authorities more than the students themselves are being accused of lack of dedication, declining productivity and even mindlessness. We shall use some illustrations from students' performance in the Secondary School Certificate Examination (SSCE) and the Joint Admission and Matriculation Examination to show the basis for the public concern. In the SSCE, English Language and Mathematics are compulsory subjects for all candidates; hence much time and attention are devoted to the teaching of these two subjects in both the primary and secondary schools. Nevertheless, the students have not been doing well, and the situation is not improving. For example, in the SSCE of May/June 1992, English Language recorded only 13.8% passes with Distinction and Credit grades while 59.6% of the total 381,506 candidates failed. For Mathematics, only 9.7% passed in Distinction and Credit grades while 59.4% failed (WAEC, 1994). In the examinations taken in June 1994 by 618,119 students, 14.2% and 13.7% passed with Distinction and Credit levels in English and Mathematics respectively. The failure rates for the two subjects were 56.3% for English and 67.4% for Mathematics (WAEC, 1994). Results in other subjects were equally poor with students doing much worse in subjects with practical work. In SSCE of December 1996, for example, failure rates were 64.6% for English, Biology 58%, Music 75%, and Book-Keeping 67%. Students' performances in the University Matriculation Examinations (UME) have also been very disappointing. Anumnu (1997:223), citing the Registrar of the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, Dr. Abdulraham, blamed "the mass failure on the falling standards in secondary education". Although the UME is not strictly a pass or fail examination but a selection one, yet students must score 200 marks out of the maximum of 400 to qualify for consideration in the highly competitive admission process. In a release on the 1997 UME, it was reported in the Guardian of September 16, 1997, that poor mean scores were recorded in most subjects, for

3 example English 48.0%, Physics 34%, Geography 29.5%, Agriculture 33.7%. Massive cheating in the examinations at some centers in places like Lagos, Nsukka, Warri and Port-Harcourt were established, hence many candidates' results were cancelled. About 376,000 sat for the examination. Since from previous records not more than 16% of the applicants may be offered admission into the Universities in any year, the pressure to cheat in the face of unsure or unreliable academic performance becomes great. For example, only about 524,900 students were admitted out of a total of about 3.29 million candidates who applied to JAMB between 1981 and 1994 (JAMB, 1997). In effect, many students aspire to continue their education in a tertiary institution, but weak educational backgrounds lead to poor performance in the two decisive examinations: the Secondary School Certificate Examination and the University Matriculation Examination. The situation has indeed reached a crisis that cannot be ignored. Education resources and Standards Writing about crisis in American classrooms, Silberman (1970, p.6) said "It is one thing to say that education must be purposeful; it is another to say what those purposes should be". In Nigeria, as in many African countries, there is an on-going lively debate on what are appropriate or relevant goals and objectives of different levels of education in the light of changing circumstances and societal values. The arguments then spill over to the issue of whether educational standards in each country are rising or falling. Fafunwa (1998) a former Federal Minister of Education, and one of the leading educationists in Nigeria has consistently held the view that standards in education have not declined, rather the expectations have changed as more people participate in education enterprise as teachers, students, examiners, employers, administrators and parents. Ukeje (1995) on his part has argued that we should concern ourselves more with quality of education provided which he believed had definitely declined, since standards, as criterion measure, should be seen as established and set to guide our aspirations. Many people do not agree with Silberman (1870) that discussion about purposes and aims of education are among the dullest and most fruitless of human pursuits, it is important that educators in Africa begin to spend more time examining what goes on in the schools in relation to why governments and tax-payers spend so much of national income on education. We need to assess the results or outcomes from the schools to ensure students are really receiving expected education since mere schooling is not synonymous with education. The crisis in Nigerian education can be traced to four main sources: teachers, facilities, funding and management. Students' poor performance in academic work and behaviour are manifestations of the problems associated with the staffing of the schools, inadequate facilities and funding. The situation is aggravated by inefficient and ineffective planning, organization and management of the available human and material resources. To begin with, the problem with staffing the schools is no longer that of unavailability of trained teachers. Today, the staffing crisis has shifted to government's inability to employ available well trained teachers to fill vacancies in the schools simply because the finance are inadequate. Therefore, many classrooms remain without teachers. In some cases, a classroom is overcrowded with students under one teacher, and teacher-student ratio can be as high as 1 to 60 in a primary or secondary school instead of the approved ratio of 1 teacher to 35 or 40 students. How can effective teaching and learning take place in such an over-crowded classroom manned by over-worked teachers? Shortage of funds has adversely affected not only the recruitment and retention of good teachers, it also has led to poor facilities and insufficient supply of instructional materials. Aghenta (1998) opined that teacher turnover in the Nigerian education system was high and was caused by many factors. He said "The factors propelling them out appear well known: poor salaries and allowances, poor conditions of service". Very few public schools in Nigeria can boast of meeting minimum standards set by the Ministry of Education, yet we expect good academic performance from the students.

4 Management Problems In the preceding section we tried to examine some of the factors that determine standard and quality of education in the Nigerian system. Perhaps the most serious of the problems concerns ineffective leadership and administration of the system. To put it in another way, the problems of shortage of teachers, facilities and funds are compounded by management crisis. If the public has lost confidence in the education system because it is turning out half-baked products, many accusing fingers point at those who manage the Ministries of Education and the educational institutions. Principals and teachers are singled out for serious blame and negligence of duty. They, in turn, blame government and parents for not being supportive to their efforts to organize and manage the students. One may argue that such counter-accusations are not new to education systems. In Nigeria however, the situation is unique because about 40 percent of the adult population are illiterate and so they cannot meaningfully engage in constructive dialogue with teachers and principals on why students' performances in public examinations are poor. Another management problem which is external to the education system although it has tremendous impact on teaching and learning in the schools is the political and economic instability that the country has been subjected to since independence in The Military have used coups to intervene several times in governance thus leading to much uncertainty, instability and frequent changes of education policies. There was even a thirty-month Nigeria-Biafra Civil War between 1967 and The consequence has been education projects and programmes that were hastily formulated and implemented, while some were abandoned half-way simply because a new military or civilian government had come to power. These have negative effects on school operations. Organizational inefficiency is also partly responsible for the poor performance of Nigerian students in their academic work. The Nations! Policy on Education was published in 1977 and revised in Very few of its targets and objectives have been fully met twenty-two years after the Policy was launched. Many policy issues still remain unresolved. For example, what is the precise relationship between Junior Secondary School and the Senior Secondary School? To what extent has the Nigerian languages aspect of the Policy been implemented? Are the prevocational and vocational subjects meant to be studied theoretically and practically or just theoretically without workshops? Why are many practical subjects being examined only with a theory paper while the practical work has been replaced by what is called "Alternative to Practical" which is really another theory paper? Indeed, there has been much confusions, if not chaos, in the manner the system is being operated. If organizational problems create confusion, then indiscipline is the bane of the system. There is indiscipline among government officials, principals, teachers, parents, students, and officials of examination bodies. Nwagwu (1988) blamed students' unrest and indiscipline in schools on general indiscipline in society caused by the break-down of law and order; excessive pursuit of money, material things and power; changing cultural values, and parental abandonment of the responsibility to train and discipline their children at home. In the school, many teachers frequently absent themselves from school or classroom teaching for one flimsy excuse or the other. They openly disobey or confront their principals, and they break education laws and school regulations recklessly. The students on the other hand have little or no respect for their teachers, principals and school rules. Frequent interventions by government officials and parents to prevent punishment being metted out to erring students weaken the authority of school principals and teachers. The emergence of secret cults in educational institutions which threaten both staff and students appears to be the last straw in the crisis of problems to be contended with by school administrators. With the use of intimidation and creation of confusion and anarchy, cult members commit all sorts of acts of indiscipline and crime including blackmailing teachers to pass them in examinations in which they performed very poorly. With such high levels of indiscipline and poor

5 organization, it is difficult to see how effective teaching and learning can go on in the schools. Consequently, students' poor performance in their academic work and public loss of confidence in the education system appear to be inevitable. Urgent, serious and far-reaching remedial fore to learn from the Nigerian experience and the strategies being adopted to cope with the problems. One of the remedial measures is the renovation of educational infrastructures through the provision of special funds by the Federal government. The two main sources of the finances for renovating old school buildings and refurbishing *he facilities are the Petroleum Trust Fund and the Education Tax Fund. Progress has been slow because of the huge sums of money required and the large numbers of schools involved, but the application of special fund outside the normal budgetary allocations is a step in the right direction if the momentum can be maintained. On the raising of staff morale and motivation, Okoro (1998) opined that the long-awaited Teachers' Registration Council should come into operation as a regulatory body, while a career service system should be adopted for teachers. He insisted that conditions of teaching service must be improved by collective bargaining and other forms of real negotiations and not collective begging. Nwagwu (1998) lent support to the above suggestion and warned that teacher frustration would not only lead to poor productivity and teacher dropout, more teacher militancy and strikes could occur with adverse consequences on educational standards and students' performance. Onyewadume (1998) has advocated a more empathic approach by school authorities and parents to students' indiscipline and more positive but radical strategies for eradicating cultism in schools. She opted for the demystification of the cultist myth in educational institutions through psychological methods rather than too much dependence on legal and punitive approaches. The message, nevertheless, is that we cannot ignore indiscipline in the school system if we expect meaningful results from teaching and learning activities. Another area of great concern is the enormous emphasis placed on examinations and certificates in Nigeria and many other African countries. Mastery of knowledge and skills is no longer of paramount importance to students nor, unfortunately, to even the teachers and parents. What Dore (1976, p.8) called "the diploma disease" has taken over the education arena. Accordingly, in his view, "In the process of qualification... the pupil is concerned not with mastery, but with being certified as having mastered". It is this great pressure to become certificated that leads many students to engage in examination malpractice. Problems in the Nigerian education system would not have degenerated to the present level of crisis if continuous assessment, inspection and supervision of schools had been carried out as required by education laws and regulations. Therefore, any African country that neglects the Inspectorate Division of its Ministry of Education stands the risk of running schools in which quality teaching and serious learning are virtually absent. Similarly, it is not enough to organize seminars and workshops for principals on effective supervision of their schools. They must also be given the necessary authority, operating funds, and instructional materials to put into practice the supervisory techniques they learnt in their pre and in-service training. References Aghenta, J. A. (1998). Teacher recruitment and retention. In N. A. Nwagwu (ed.), Teachers and teaching in Nigeria: Issues, challenges and prospects (pp ). Benin: The Nigerian Academy of Education Yearbook No. 2. Ajayi,.T. (1997). Maintenance of academic standard in Nigerian schools. In.A. Ejiogu and.k. Ajayi (eds.), Emergent issues in Nigerian education, (Volume 2) (pp ). Lagos. Unilag Consult. Anumnu,.S. (1997). JAMB: To be or not to be? In.A. Ejiogu and.k. Ajayi, Emergent issues in Nigerian education (Volume 2), (pp ). Lagos: Unilag Consult. Bereday, G. Z. (1968). Essays on world education: The crisis of supply and demand. New York: O.U.P. Dore,.R. (1976). The diploma disease: Education, qualification and development. London: George Alien & Unwin.

6 Fafunwa, A. B. (1998). Memoirs of a Nigerian minister of education. Lagos: Macmillan (Nigeria). JAMB (1997). University applications and admissions records. Abuja: JAMB Office. Nwagwu, C. C. (1988). Students' unrest in higher institutions learning: Causes and remedies. Nigeria Journal of Education, 3(1) Nwagwu, N. A. (1998). Teacher militancy, productivity and standards in education. In N. A. Nwagwu (ed.), Teachers and teaching in Nigeria (pp ). Benin: Nigerian Academy of Education. Okoro, D. C. (1998). Building and sustaining teacher morale and job satisfaction. In N. A. Nwagwu (ed.), Teachers and Teaching in Nigeria (pp ). Benin: Nigerian Academy of Education. Onyewadume, M. A. (1998). 'Demystification of the cultist myth in educational institutions'. In.S. Ofiaifo and.r. Olubor (eds.). Advances in the field of education: The Nigerian experience. Benin: Institute of Education, Uniben. Silberman,.C. (1970). Crisis in the classroom: remaking of American education. New York: Random House. The Guardian (1997). Press release by JAMB registrar. Newspaper issue of September 16. P.3. Ukeje, B. O. (1995). Crisis in the Nigeria education system : Keynote Address at the Nigeria Academy of Education Annual Congress in November at Abuja. UNESCO (1991). World education report. Paris: UNESCO Statistical records. Lagos: WAEC Office.