One of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals is to expand access to education and ensure quality education delivery

We need to seek strategies for improving education — NERDC boss

Written by Olubusuyi Adenipekun
Thursday, 04 December 2008
One of the targets of the Millennium Development Goals is to expand access to education and ensure quality education delivery. Major operators of the nation’s education system are therefore expected to come up with innovations towards meeting this target.
Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof Godswill Obioma
The Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council, a parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Education, is one of these key players which has been at the forefront of improving education in the country.
A fortnight ago, it organised and sponsored a two-day national conference on educational reforms for sustainable development in Abuja where it brought together big wigs in the education and non-education sectors essentially for seeking strategies for achieving quality education delivery.
The Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof Godswill Obioma, in this exclusive interview, speaks extensively on the fundamental principle behind the conference and the value which it has added to the education sector.
Excerpts:
Why this national conference in the first place?
The essential thing is that we like to improve education quality. That is the most important thing and you will recall that in the last couple of years we have had Millennium Development Goals and one of the goals in that MDGs is to expand access to quality education.
Specifically, that we must seek ways to expand access and provide quality education. So, one way to do that is to seek strategies to improve education and that is essentially what we are trying to resolve in terms of what to teach, in terms of who to teach and in terms of products, finding innovations in education delivery.
That is the fundamental principle for having this national conference.
The theme of the conference is Educational Reforms for Sustainable Development. What informed the choice of this theme?
We need education for development. Education is an instrument par excellence for social and economic reconstruction. Education drives development. Developed economies depend on education to build human capital especially now that we talk about knowledge management and innovation.
We will need to develop human resource to build up knowledge and to manage knowledge. And so, economies that have evolved - Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Asian Tigers and also the first world economies like Britain and so on - all depend on human capital. And what brings about human capital is education.
So, we need to create the strategy for ensuring development that will also be sustainable. We need to take a second look at our educational system and ask what has gone wrong. What do we do to improve it? How do we move forward? And so, we need education for development and hope that development will be sustainable. That is what informed the choice of the theme.
And what is the essence of the conference concept paper which you presented?
Usually in a conference of this nature, there is the need to keep invited scholars, lead paper presenters and resource persons focussed. And if you don’t articulate the concept properly, there is the tendency to veer off the focus. So, the essence of the concept paper is to keep the conference in focus of the main theme, of the sub-themes such that the discussions would meet the target of the conference.
While presenting the concept paper, the first thing I said was that reform in a global context has strung borders as the world has become smaller, the space has disappeared and communication has improved. Information Technology has improved and knowledge management has also improved. So, these have made it possible for different countries to evolve strategies to meet knowledge management.
And in Nigeria, what has happened in the last four years is that we have adopted a development strategy which is the National Economic Empowerment Development Strategy (NEEDS). In NEEDS, the role of education is very paramount.
It is to be used to eradicate poverty, to create wealth and of course to use education to empower the people, to change their values more positively. So, we have to link education and situate it properly for the achievement of NEEDS target.
We could see NEEDS, SEEDS, LEEDS and NEEDS 11 and these dovetail into the 7-point agenda of Mr. President. The 7-point agenda also talks about human capital development and it relies on education to achieve that.
You could see education in the whole aspect of the new thinking of government, especially as the vision is to put Nigeria among the 20 biggest players in the world economies by the year 2020. You can see education, NEEDS, SEEDS, NEEDS 1 & 11 and 7-point agenda all coming into play in a flux.
So, that is why I made references to all of that in my presentation.
One of the sub-themes of the conference is “Educational Reforms for What, Who and Why? “Can you expatiate on this?
In the process of effecting a change, you need to know exactly what you want to do. You need to ask basic questions. For instance, why am I doing what I’m doing? What has gone wrong with what I’ve done before?
This is called strategic thinking. If we want to bring about change or reform in any system, we should ask ourselves why we want to carry out the reform. We need to justify it especially in the context of the country. Hence the question, why are we doing the educational reforms conference, for what and for who?
The existence of a functional curriculum is very crucial to any educational reform programme. But most of the textbooks for the new 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum are yet to be published. How do you intend to address this challenge?
The implementation of the curriculum was to start in September last year. It didn’t start because the approval process was not completed and again we thought that the textbooks, at least for Primary 1 and JSS1, would be ready. And the NERDC was given the mandate to review those books. So, it was decided at the National Council on Education that implementation would begin from this year. And that gave us the window to begin to review the books. I will say we have made a lot of progress. The textbooks review started six months ago with major publishing companies. But I can assure you that primary 1 books in the core areas from some of these publishers are out now.
But, to what extent have the publishers implemented the agreement that NERDC signed with them early this year at Ibadan on prompt publication of basic education textbooks?
We signed an agreement and we agreed that because the implementation of the curriculum will start from Primary one and JSS 1, we should strive within the last quarter of the year to ensure that these books are out; and I’m sure that some of the books are out already. They have made a lot of progress.
Apart from textbooks, equipment need to be purchased for schools before the basic education curriculum can be successfully implemented. To what extent has government gone in providing the needed equipment?
Even though this area is beyond my mandate, I know that the Universal Basic Education Commission is to intervene in the provision of instructional materials which include the kind of thing you are talking about. And I know also that government provided funds to do that. One of the clearest indicators that that is being done is that the curriculum we developed was printed from intervention funds and distributed nationwide to all public schools.
I recall also that states are expected, based on their needs, to bring up what they desire to be able to access those funds. So, government at federal level, through UBEC, is to assist the states and the states are expected to provide facilities and materials and so on, to facilitate the successful implementation of the curriculum. I believe that is being done.
Does the 9-year Basic Education Curriculum cater for non-formal education?
The translation of the basic education curriculum for the use of adult learners is being done by the Mass Literacy Commission both at the federal and state levels. We have given them copies of the curriculum for the 9-year basic education programme and the essence is for them to translate it for the teaching of adult learners.
How do we ensure an adequate funding of education in Nigeria?
Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, the Director-General of the Debt Management Office tackled this issue in his presentation at the conference titled: “Options for Sustainable Funding of Education In Nigeria”.
He gave us alternative ways of funding, both in terms of structure, in terms of drive, in terms of source and he promoted the idea of the participation of the private and public sectors in funding education.
How would you assess the just concluded national education conference?
First of all, I think people were excited. There were over 500 people at the hall on day one of the conference. And there were over 300 people who came for dinner on day two of the conference. These are professionals drawn from education sector and non-education sectors. So, I would say the conference was successful based on the extent of those who attended it.
Again, if you look at success from the benchmark of quality of papers, we have the likes of Professor Pai Obanya, an international education consultant, Professor Ivowi, former Executive Secretary of NERDC, we had the likes of Professor Mkpa A. Mkpa, the Vice Chancellor of Abia State University, we had Professor Nur Alkali, a former Vice Chancellor, we had Dr. Abraham Nwankwo, the D-G, Debt Management Office, we had Professor Grace Alele-Williams, former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Benin, who all showed enormous interest in the conference.
Then, we had scholars, both from Universities, Colleges of Education, NGOs, Civil Society who came to make presentations and everybody was happy. And if you also look at the outcome in terms of the communique released, you will realise that the conference was a huge success. The communique made critical suggestions on how to improve education quality.
How would you get all the recommendations of the communique across to government for implementation?
I’m going to make a report to the Honourable Minister of Education.
We are essentially a parastatal that reports to the Minister, and as a parastatal, one of our mandates is to encourage conferences, encourage promotion of research and encourage discussions at this level.
So we will forward the report of this conference to the Minister of Education and I believe that the Minister will use it very productively in improving quality. That is the way to get across to government.