- Urges govt to reform education sector
Temitope Omabegho
ActionAid, a development-focused and anti-poverty organisation, has called on the federal government of Nigeria to reform the education sector with respect to the structure, processes and consideration for the poor and excluded.
ActionAid country director for Nigeria, Ojobo Ode Atuluku said this at a press presentation of a report titled, ‘Whose children go to the Bridge International Academies?’, which took place in Lagos recently. A female representative of the Deputy Governor of Lagos State was also at the event.
The reform, according to Atuluku, has become pressing due to the growth of “for-profit†private schools targeting low income families, which claim to serve the under-privileged communities with affordable cost school fees.
On the contrary, such school chains have been found to be operating beyond government regulations and have been challenged by the existing legal systems in other African countries like Kenya and Uganda.
These schools have now opened in Nigeria. An example of such schools is the Bridge International Academy which opened it gates in Nigeria in September 2015 with two schools, and has expanded to 23 schools as at the commencement of the new school session in 2016.
She further added that “experiences with the schools made us decide to find out about the families these schools are serving and what has been the community experience and perception about such schools.
“Our findings was that the total cost for a year of education at Bridge schools, which includes uniform and all of the necessary materials for school is not low enough for the poor to access it, and is far above the N2,380 ($6.60) a month that they widely claim.
Commenting further, the director said, “policy inconsistencies and lack of an integrated national development planning framework have combined to produce the current scenario of the decay in education in general and public education in particular. The privatisation of education has failed to and has been shown to be unable to deliver universal access to quality functional and productive education.
“There is an urgent need for reform and this includes restructuring the management and funding to public education by different tiers of government and the related need to also restructure the distribution of public investment between primary, secondary and tertiary education respectivelyâ€, she added.
Also speaking, the coordinator of the research, Mr. Tunde Aremu said “For us in ActionAid, the issue is not just about Bridge International Academy, it is about what the school symbolises in terms of privatisation of education, commercialisation of education and the shutting down of the gate of schools against the poor.
Also, the education programme advisor of ActionAid, Laban Onisimus, said the right of children right is the duty of government to provide.
Bridge International Academy was founded in Kenya in 2009 by a group of entrepreneurs Shannon May, Jay Kimmelman and Phil Frei.
Quality and affordable basic education has been described as one of key aspects of the global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and is also a key indicator of growth and development, especially in the developing countries.
This is because an educated society would have a viable and vibrant working population which can help lift such countries to the required level for overall development.
