aminigo overview of secondary education

Journal of Education in Developing Areas (JEDA) Vol. 19, No. 1.

OVERVIEW OF SECONDARY EDUCATION IN RIVERS STATE: ISSUES, CHALLENGES AND RECOMMENDATIONS

By

Ibitamuno Mitchell Aminigo Professor of Educational Philosophy

Faculty of Education University of Port Harcourt

Abstract

The saga of secondary education in Nigeria from about the time of Nigeria’s independence up to the present is examined. The gradual degeneration and erosion of the quality of secondary education in terms of infrastructural decay and the demise of the boarding school system in Rivers State is highlighted. The author insists that the hidden curriculum is very much a valid aspect of secondary school education and must be restored if the right quality and equality of educational opportunity would be assured for students. The author argues that until teachers’ welfare is assured the Nigerian nation may be providing inferior quality secondary education as only happy and contented professionals can ensure qualitative education delivery.

March , 2011 JOURNAL OF EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING AREAS (JEDA) VOL.19 (1).

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Introduction

The Nigerian Constitution clearly states as one of its social objectives that the state is

social order is founded upon the ideals of freedom, equality and justice. In furtherance

of the social order;

a) Every citizen shall have equality of rights obligations and opportunities

before the law.

b) The sanctity of the human person shall be recognized and human dignity

shall be maintained and enhanced;

c) Government shall be humane.

(Nigerian Constitution Chapter II, Sec. 17).

Further, section 18 indicates that:

i) Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring that there are equal and

adequate educational opportunities at all levels.

ii) Government shall promote science and technology.

iii) Government shall strive to eradicate illiteracy and to this end government

shall as and when practicable provide:

a. Free, compulsory and universal primary education.

b. Free secondary education.

c. Free university education and

d. Free adult literacy programme.

The afore-stated provisions of the nation’s constitution clearly indicate that the

national policy is geared towards actualizing the attainment of these very fundamental

principles of state policy. The basic tool for achieving or attaining these objectives is

the school system. And secondary education is a cardinal aspect of the educational

system. It is the bridge between the basic educational level and higher education or

the tertiary education level. It is common knowledge that the educational system in

our country has retrogressed a lot since the past three decades. In essence, twenty

years after independence (1980) the educational system was still good. But beyond

that point, a lot of ugly factors have combined to frustrate the dreams of national

development our founding fathers had when they drafted the first national

development plan. Even the Ashby Commission and Fred Harbison’s projections

envisaged a certain requisite level of high level manpower production by 1980. They

forecast enough qualified professionals based on the healthy educational system at the

secondary level. Never mind that the system was not domesticated at Independence.



And so, the Nigerian nation, faced with the ugly challenges of the civil war experience,

found it necessary to change the status quo by drafting a national education policy.

This new policy was the outcome of the national curriculum conference that took place

in Lagos, 1969. That policy (finally published 1977 and Revised 1981) effectively began

to be implemented nationwide from 1989. All this is now history. The half hearted and

faulty implementation of that policy revealed our weaknesses as a nation with regard

to education.

The Present State of Secondary Education in Rivers State

Everybody knows that the 6-3-3-4 system which was borne out of the National Policy

1977 (revised 1981) did not fare well. Intro Tech equipment were imported but

teachers were not trained to handle them. A few who went on exchange programmes

abroad returned and joined the private sector. The UPE was started in 1976 with the

aim to actualize the 6-3-3-4 over time but the hasty preparations created a lot of

practical problems. Many “emergency folks” were quick to attend the TTC’s built all

over the country but they were never called to be teachers. Even those who “felt called”

were not of very good intellectual quality. Many were not good in linguistic competence

even as they completed the Grade II teacher training programme. Before long, it

became obvious that the University Primary Education (UPE) programme was fine in

concept but faulty in implementation. It became obvious that the least qualified

teacher in the country should not be the pivotal teacher, the Grade II teacher, but the

National Certificate in Education (NCE) teacher. And so many were compelled once

more to upgrade their professional skills in line with the new requirements. Smart

ones even went ahead to take Bachelor’s Degree in Education courses to enable them

qualify fully as education professionals. The aim, of course, was to ensure that

manpower to implement the 6-3-3-4 was not lacking. But we were all here, when after

a lot of drifting (educationally speaking) the very apostle of the UPE in 1976, had

another opportunity to become the apostle of the UBE in the year 2000, at his second

coming!

The current policy on Nigerian education has modified the structure of

secondary education. It has also modified the configuration of “primary education”.

What we now have is the “UBE policy” which runs for the first nine years of a child’s

school life. In essence, it is no longer fashionable to spend six years in the “primary

school”. One should now have “basic education”, which is of nine years duration,



combining, “primary education” of six years, with secondary education of the initial

three years, without a break. The idea is to improve the knowledge and skill base of

the recipient and make him fit into his roles in the Nigerian society.

In essence “basic education” as we see it today in the Rivers State and Nigeria as

a whole is the foundation for “secondary education”. The federal government’s UBE

National Policy document singles out the following aspects of the UBE programme to

ensure its realization:

Public enlightenment and social mobilization Data collection and analysis Planning, monitoring, evaluation Teachers, their recruitment, education, training Retraining, motivation Infrastructural facilities Enriched curricular Textbooks/funding Management of the entire process.

The foregoing aspects of the planning of the UBE scheme are the key points by

which to assess the issues and challenges of secondary education in Rivers State

today. It is expected that whatever happens, all the above mentioned aspects will be

adequately attended to. This is to guard against previous failures, especially in the

implementation of the UPE in the past. Every aspect of enlightenment, data collection,

planning, monitoring and evaluation, funding etc have to be adequately handled.

Above all, there must be a deliberate resolve to fight corruption so that the quality of

secondary education will not be compromised. Corruption comes when tutors refuse

to do their work with integrity. Integrity itself will be lacking when teachers’ salaries

are delayed, their working environment is poor, their classes are overpopulated,

(especially in the urban areas) education is poorly funded, education funds are

mismanaged, physical structures are allowed to decay, (as in Government Girls

Secondary School, Rumuokwuta), gratuities and pensions are unpaid and policy

implementation is inconsistent. In concrete terms this means, for many schools

around the state no geography laboratories, maps, globes, wind vanes, rain gauges,

pictures, diagrams or teaching aids on a consistent professionally acceptable scale.

What allowances are paid for teaching aids design? (This is done outside school

periods). What about science tutors, geography tutors, school patrons of the Debating

and Dramatic societies; English tutors and their literary societies?

How about promotions? Are they carried out when due? What of the



appointment of Principals? Is it not an open secret that some professionals teach for

over twenty years without being made principals and their juniors are made because

of “politics” and “connections”? What of the management of the School Boards? Why

do we have medical doctors as Board Chairs when we have doctors of educational

disciplines who are indigenes of the state? When will any professional educator or

teacher be sent to head the Boards in Health, Justice or Environment? Why don’t the

powers that be send a Professor of Physics to the Ministry of Environment and leave

the management of education to the professors of Educational disciplines? We need to

stress that as a wide ranging discipline education involves: management, economics,

history and policy, comparative education, educational technology, technical

education, adult and non-formal education, philosophy of education, language

education, curriculum studies. Science education, business education, health

education, physical education, special education, educational psychology, sociology,

educational measurement and evaluation.

Any leader who is not a specialist in any of these sub disciplines of education

who happens to be placed to oversee education certainly needs the services of special

advisers to guide him on the assignment of managing education in our country.

How about inspection of education, especially in the Riverine areas? What is the

staff/pupil ratio? What happens during class lessons? Are teaching aids used

consistently? Are teachers posted to the schools where their services are needed? Or

are all the experienced teachers left in PHALGA and OBALGA because they reject

transfers outside? Does the state carry out yearly teachers’ workshops at the LGA level

for subject tutors or are tutors brought to the civic center for a weeklong programme

of hurried presentations as has been the practice before now?

Do teachers guide/counsel students they teach or do they allow them to drift

and float until they graduate from secondary school? How about school seminars on

careers, sex education, marriage, drugs, cultism, study skills, business and

agricultural entrepreneurship? Do we really prepare the kids for the future? I suppose

we now have professional school counsellors in the schools. Why do many graduate

but cannot enter higher institutions, get jobs or start a trade after junior or senior

secondary school? Is there true equality of educational opportunity here? Can our

youths compete with others from across the nation?

We all know that the practice of secondary education which begins with the

“junior secondary” or “upper basic”, ends with the “senior secondary”. In essence, the



foundation for senior secondary education is laid at the junior secondary. The senior

secondary, as we know hardly rejects even the weaker ones of the junior secondary

level. In most cases students transfer from “tough” schools to schools where they

make “good JS 3 results”. This done, they move onto the senior secondary level.

Absolutely, nothing is done to monitor this trend in the State. The upshot of these

happenings is that at the point of graduation, many of our secondary school graduates

come out with good SSC results, but with poor grasp of the knowledge and skills

supposedly acquired. The same students also insist on taking the JAMB Examinations

(now Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination). Surprisingly, some still pass the

examinations and gain admission into the higher institutions. It is at this point we in

the Universities, Colleges of Arts and Science, Polytechnics, Monotechics and Colleges

of Education begin to see the glaring weaknesses in the students entrusted to our

care.

My experience in teaching Use of English courses for years has revealed that

only about five percent of our University undergraduates write and speak good English

with confidence. Yet they all possess sound credits in the West African School

Certificate and the National Examination Council examinations! Many are bereft of

sound study skills, social etiquette, good morals, personal discipline and clear

ambition. All these mean that their secondary education is deficient in very many

ways. Most times in the schools we visit for teaching practice supervision science

laboratories are absent. School buildings are never repainted or maintained and staff

room furniture are antiquated. In several cases one laboratory serves all science

subjects. This is very true of many community schools, now operated by the Rivers

State Government. Despite the UBE programme implementation, Intro Tech

Laboratories are inadequate. Integrated Science, Home Economics, Biology, Chemistry

and Physics Laboratories are non-existent. These can only be seen in the old schools

built before the Nigerian Civil War!

Many schools lack functional libraries with good up to date text books and

general education books. For most government schools there is no time for

“preparatory”. Students are dismissed from school at 2pm and they go home without

any further monitoring of their reading or study habits. This is a fall out of the

scrapping of the boarding system started by Professor Tam David West (a non

specialist in Education) in the late 70s. It must be remarked that the bane of

secondary education in the Rivers State is the lack of boarding schools. School



culture, discipline, “prep” times, compound work, dining hall rules and etiquette,

devotions and chapel services, debating and dramatic clubs have all given way to

cultism and examination malpractice. Groups like the Scripture Union and the

Student Christian Movement, both Worldwide Youth Organizations are no longer

active in moral and spiritual upbringing of the leaders of tomorrow. Many schools have

no reading programmes to compel students to read Elechi Amadi, Gabriel Okara,

Chinua Achebe and Ngugi Wa Thiongo. Libraries are meant to stock books (both

fiction and all other sorts) for students to read to improve their language power and

enhance their linguistic competence, but this is never done.

We must realize that the school has a hidden curriculum which may not be

taught in the classroom or laboratory but which certainly is alive and very basic to

social and cultural development. The ethos of life, group solidarity, lifelong cross

cultural friendships, school sports and games, interschool debates, quizzes and

competitions etc are part of the hidden curriculum of school life, but how much do we

nurture these in the Rivers State? According to Everff Reiner (1972:39).

The purpose of the hidden curriculum is to propagate the social myths, those beliefs which distinguish one society from another and help to hold a society together. All societies have myths, and it is one of the major functions of any educational system to transmit them to the young.

In a crowded city like Port Harcourt, students spend about there hours daily on

transportation to and from school, because of the lack of boarding facilities. Have we

bothered to estimate the total loss we suffer as a result of these happenings?

The Rivers youths have a right to grow up into well rounded Nigerian adults

capable of competing with others anywhere in the world. But if because of extreme

ruralness, riverine deprivations, remoteness of locale, etc. Rivers youths are not

exposed to quality education, except they live in urban areas such as Port Harcourt,

Bori, Omoku, Oyigbo, Ahoada and Eleme, then we must realize that three quarters of

our students are receiving education of lesser quality than all other Nigerian kids! In

the future shall we look forward to qualified professionals from other parts of the

country or from India as it happened in the 70’s? God forbid!

This writer believes that secondary education in Rivers State is already on the

retrieval in terms of quality, because of the model schools being built. Let the “green



school” continue and be made state wide. This is because aesthetics and environment

also enhance child learning. Let the working environment of the school executives be

made attractive to enable them empower the Rivers youth with their educational rights

as to engender national development through quality manpower in the future. The

faulty structures of the Nigerian education system must be totally eliminated from

Rivers State classrooms. Teachers staffrooms should be furnished, tiled, with window

blinds and air-conditioned as it is in other professions.

The essence of education is to develop the child and make him fit to inhabit and

transform his world in the future. It is meant to provide all round development, moral,

intellectual, physical and spiritual. All these mean that education is meant to develop

the intellect, and enhance the acquisition of skills that enable the recipient child to

become fulfilled intellectually and acquire practical skills and abilities that would

enhance his well being and employment or self-employment. But if due to inadequate

funding, crises of quality, impoverishment of the teaching/education executives and

blatant failure to ensure the child’s educational rights, he is educationally

malnourished, then we can declare that we the adult world in the state have failed in

our correlative duty to provide quality secondary education for our children.

CONCLUSION Prospects in the Teacher’s Role It is obvious that the teacher has the greatest role to play in the formal education of

the child. If the quality of education dispensed becomes doubtful because of poor

implementation, the recipient becomes incapable of self development and mutatis

mutandis the state he belongs to is forced to retrogress. The teacher lays the

foundation for the child’s future development from the nursery school to the

University. He is the facilitator that makes it possible for the child to benefit from

learning experiences. The teacher has to be recruited and kept in the classroom on a

continuous basis. If this is done his role would have been appreciated. But the

Nigerian society does not seem to have realized how important the teacher is to the

process of child, social and national development. Most times he is expected to help

produce Engineers, Professors, Pharmacists, Doctors, Lawyers, Architects and

Businessmen who within a decade become comfortable and prosperous while he is

expected to remain devoted and skilled without prestige, self esteem and basic



comfort. No wonder current crops of teachers at all levels have refused to imbibe the

ethic of poverty in the midst of plenty!

Our conclusion in the matter of Secondary School education in Rivers State is

that the mistakes of the past must be corrected. And that correction has to begin by

addressing the issue of the teacher’s professional and material welfare. It is then that

a new dawn will be seen in the Rivers Secondary School practice because its chief

operating officer is a happy and contented professional.

References

Aminigo, I. M. (1993). “A Comparative Study of Social Justice Practices in Nigeria and USA” Fulbright Orientation Seminar, University of Texas at Austin, USA, August 2.

Aminigo, I. M. (1999). Educational Philosophy and National Development. Buguma:

Hanging Gardens Publishers. Aminigo, I. M. (2007). An Advanced Introduction to Philosophy of Education. PH;

Zelta Research Consult. Federal Republic of Nigeria (1999). Constitution of the Federal Republic of

Nigeria. Lagos: Federal Government Press. Maeroff, G. (1988). The Empowerment of Teachers. New York: Teachers College, PH. Martin C. (1972). Schooling in a Corporate Society. New York: David Mackay Co.

Inc. Martin C. (1974). Education as Cultural Imperialism. New York: David Mackay Co.

Inc. Reiner, E. (1972). School is Dead: Alternatives in Education. New York: Double

Day/Anchor Books.

aminigo overview of secondary education

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