Education jobs rising amidst concerns over falling standards

The education sector, particularly the private segment, dominated economic activity, generating most of the jobs in Nigeria’s formal sector in the first nine months of the year, but this comes amid widening concerns on the declining standards of learning across the country and the spill-over of poorly skilled manpower in the market place.

The Education and Manufacturing sectors generated the most jobs in both the first and second quarters of 2014, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show.

Education came first, with 23,643 jobs or 31.10% of the total in Q1, increasing by 5,417 or 22.91% to 29,060 new jobs in the second quarter, 36.90% of the total,

In the third quarter, 21,154 additional jobs were generated in the sector, also showing

dominance in economic activity.

The NBS figures further showed that as at the first quarter of 2014, the education sector had about 1,573,082 employees, making up 49.64 percent of the total employed during the period. The numbers increased marginally in the second quarter by 0.43 percent or 6,771 employees, to reach 1,579,854 or 50.13 percent of the total.

But despite growing education employments, standards continue to fall at an alarming rate.

The May/June result of the West African Senior Secondary Certificate Examination shows that less than 32 per cent of candidates obtained credit passes in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics.

Of the 1,692,435 candidates, 529,425 obtained credits in five subjects, including English Language and Mathematics, to qualify to study at the tertiary level.

Stakeholders blame this poor performance on poor teacher quality, poor reading habits, parents’ lack of interest, and the emergence of Information Communication Technology (ICT).

Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, World Bank Country Director in Nigeria, said at the weekend that the problem is quite significant, noting that one would naturally expect that access and quality would improve, especially with expanding economic activity. But she is concerned that 4 out of 10 Nigerian children still do not seem to be able to read and write, even after grade 4.

Marie-Nelly is worried that the enrollment rate is not increasing and particularly by the growing regional variations and disparities.

“You need to address these disparities and secondly, we need to ensure that the children are actually learning because we found out that in every society, the fundamental education, primary education is really the one that positions children for their future,” she stated.

“Whether they go to higher education or the vocational stream but it is important to have this solid foundations.”

Marie-Nelly said she would like to see a situation where there is a solid commitment coming from all parties, to tackle this problem in a very effective way.

She said apart from enrollment, there is  the need to revisit the curriculum, and the assessment system.

She said the World Bank is already assisting the government in this area, especially in three states, Ekiti, Anambra and Bauchi, where they have a programme that looks at the quality of education at the primary level but in a very consistent manner, by improving the quality of teachers, reviewing the curriculum and having a proper assessment system.

The World Bank envoy suggested this strategy could change the picture if extended to the entire country.”So you need to work on the quality and access.

“And one element is to improve the quality of teachers. Secondly is reviewing the curriculum. Thirdly is to involve the parents,” she recommended.

Renowned economist, Bismark Rewane raised concerns that a lot of educational institutions exist in the country, which still do not deliver quality.

Rewane observed that the number of universities in Nigeria was rising but lamented that there was  no correlation between quantum and the quality of education.

“I want us to be extremely cautious about this because there is a pipeline of education that is delivering quantity rather than quality.

Rewane said every industry has an equilibrium number of players that gives it maximum output.

“When there are too many players, they just destroy the whole thing,” he stated.

“I think that in jumping on the bandwagon of competition, we should also know that there is what is called optimal size of an industry and optimal size of activity,” he added.

Businessday