Kaduna: Confronting Education Sector Challenges

Kaduna State Governor, Nasir El-Rufai’s effort in the education sector is a model for other states, writes Louis Achi

The audacious Emirates Mars Mission is a UAE Space Agency un-crewed space exploration trip to Mars. It’s actually the Arab-Islamic world’s first interplanetary mission. The mission’s planet orbiter named Hope was launched on July 19, 2020 and reached Mars on February 9, 2021.

It has started its study of the Martian atmosphere and sending back images. The mission design, development, and operations were led by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre. It may be legitimately asked: what’s the connection between Mars exploration, UAE and the subject matter of education, Kaduna State – and Nigeria for that matter?

The UAE has been ranked the highest in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region and 45thworldwide in a global school rankings list compiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The list, which is based on test scores in math and the sciences among 15-year-olds in 76 countries, highlights the link between education and economic growth.

Andreas Schleicher, OECD’s education director said: “This is the first time we have a truly global scale of the quality of education. The idea is to give more countries – rich and poor – access to comparing themselves against the world’s education leaders, to discover their relative strengths and weaknesses, and to see what the long-term economic gains from improved quality in schooling could be for them.”
Globally, Singapore topped the rankings, followed by Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. Western nations such as the UK and the US ranked 20 and 28 respectively. Ghana, South Africa, Honduras, Morocco and Oman rounded off the last five on the list. Nigeria was not even listed.

It could be clearly seen from the foregoing that reform is imperative in every sector of human life and society, especially, when considerable regression has set in. Currently, it is indisputable that critical systems have failed or become obsolete in Nigeria’s education sector.

Therefore, the issue of reform in Kaduna State or Nigeria’s education system is not unusual. More advanced nations like Finland, Singapore, and the United States continually reform their education systems. Developing countries like India, Qatar and several others similarly had times of reform in their educational systems.

Typically, a reform starts with the identification of a problem, which is further studied, analysed, and evaluated. Thus, incepting any sustainable and worthwhile reform is long. In other to identify the problem, there may be the need for surveying and conducting series of tests: Aptitude, Achievement, and Competency test as the case may demand.

As it were, Governor El Rufai of Kaduna State has demonstrated within his six years on the saddle that a powerful vision pulls in ideas, people and other resources, despite the tough challenges. It creates the energy and will to make change happen. It inspires individuals, diverse stakeholders, partnering organisations and institutions to commit, to persist and to give their best.

Cut to the bone, this is the game-changing story of the focused, challenging reform of the Kaduna State education sector – a scenario that could hobble the vision that any unfocussed leader enunciates. It could be recalled that the dinosaurs died out, because they could not adapt quickly enough to environmental changes that swept their milieu.

According to El-Rufai, “Education is a lever for social mobility, enabling people to rise above the circumstances of their birth and providing a basis for building a meritocratic society. We have begun implementing ambitious education reforms in Kaduna State and, as you all know, these reforms have very often been met with resistance or in some cases, misrepresentation and mischief.”

He spoke as the 4th Distinguished Guest Lecturer of the University of Medical Science, Ondo State, on Monday, 30th April 2018. “We recognise education as a fundamental component of human development. Education is an aspirational asset, a tool that sparks the curiosity to seek solutions.

“This curiosity and its resultant solutions are integral to providing the kind of answers we need for modern development. Perhaps, the most important of its many benefits is the opportunity for social mobility; how quality education enables the poor to move out of poverty by the sheer force of determination, application of knowledge and hard work”.

Further, according to him, “The rest of Nigeria is watching closely how Kaduna State is pursuing the reforms in education, and how we are overcoming the resistance of those, who think that their privileges, perquisites and entitlements should come before the need to equip the next generation with the ability to compete in a world that is changing faster than we can comprehend.

“Our educational policies and programmes are aimed at eradicating illiteracy in Kaduna State, ensuring every child gets at least nine years of free basic education, improving infrastructure and tools, while attracting the best people in character and learning to the teaching profession.”
The foregoing fundamentally captures the big picture game plan of Governor El-Rufai as he frontally confronted his state’s dilapidated education sector.

On assuming power in 2015, the problems El-Rufai was complaining about in opposition, became his responsibility to fix, especially, in the critical education sector. In 2015, he declared a State of Emergency in Education, enabling his administration to accelerate procurement and payment procedures for education projects, and began a programme of renovation and rehabilitation of primary schools.

This included providing roofs, doors, and windows, boreholes and toilets. Where urgently needed, he built new classrooms. In addition, his administration began placing orders for school furniture, because in some places up to 90% of pupils (not the 50% the former government claimed) had no desks or chairs.
After spending billions fixing about ten percent of the primary schools then, he did an evaluation that concluded that he needed to move towards rebuilding schools, not just renovating them. With a growing population, Kaduna State primary schools needed to have more classrooms and offices for teachers. He therefore opted to begin to build schools on two or three floors, depending on the projected demand and availability of land. The conclusion was that he would require faster, system building technologies and significant sources of funding to rebuild the schools in the needed timeline.

His administration had to open up to the federal government and their development partners about the scale of the challenges they faced on the education front. He compiled an album showing the sorry state of the state’s schools, with statistics on teacher quality and pupil-teacher ratios.
According to Governor El Rufai, “I shared the album with the Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun and then, our development partners, including the Abuja Office of the World Bank. This is what led to the discussions that culminated in the World Bank approving a concessionary “performance-for-results” facility of $350 million for Kaduna State on 20th June 2017.

“This facility would have enabled us to take care of the physical infrastructure component of the Primary Education challenge, in addition to other investments that will transform the economy of Kaduna State. Alas, the enemies of the talakawa of Kaduna State in the Nigerian Senate continue to be a stumbling block to accessing this facility.”

Beyond the physical infrastructure, he remained keen about addressing the personnel side too. Without competent teachers, even the most glittering school is lifeless.
On June 3, 2017, the Kaduna State Government conducted a competency test for primary school teachers. The test was organised and supervised by a committee, which included the state chairman and secretary of the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) and representatives of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) as members.

But the results were disappointing! Only 11,591 teachers (33.9%) scored at least 75% in the test. Others fell within the following categories: A. 70 and 74%: 5,766 (16.9%) B. 60-69%: 8,759 (26.1%) and C. 0-59%: 8,047 (23.58%)
His administration then made a painful, but necessary, decision to disengage teachers that scored less than 75%. This was done in accordance with the terms of their employment. Government records indicated that concerns about the problem of teacher quality led the government of late Sir Patrick Yakowa in 2012 to dismiss about 4000 teachers found to have fake qualifications.

That same year, the Yakowa government also gave a five-year window within which all unqualified teachers were to acquire the NCE, the minimum teaching qualification. This five-year window closed in 2017, and this was the reason for the timing of the Teacher Competency Test.

Despite the threats of organised labour, and the strike actions that followed, he launched a programme to recruit 25,000 new teachers. More than 43,000 applied for teaching positions. After examinations, SUBEB arrived at a shortlist of 15,897, which was subjected to further face-to-face scrutiny and screening. The first batch of 11,385 new teachers have completed their induction training and have now reported in the schools to which they were posted.

In his words: “We intend to continue to recruit teachers until we meet the target of 25,000 new teachers to replace the 21,780 unqualified teachers that were disengaged.”
But a key problem confronting Governor El-Rufai’s administration is still education sector funding and charging of appropriate tuition fees for its tertiary education institutions, especially, the Kaduna State University (KASU). KASU was established under the Kaduna State Law No 3, promulgated on May 21, 2004.

What really are the options for funding tertiary education in Nigeria? The issues are not limited to Kaduna State. Interestingly, Kaduna State is leading the charge on the crucial issue, not unlike as it did with the teachers’ competency test.

The federal government has the education tax fund; clearly with the dwindling resources available to state governments, can the Kaduna State University continue to charge N26,000 for medical science? Can it attract the best lecturers? Certainly not!
Inevitably, a review of fees which the state government had done can hardly be avoided though this will pressure parents more. The upwards review of fees for KASU from N26,000 to N150,000 is expectedly generating ripples.

A comparison of the Kaduna State University in tuition payment with 24 other state owned universities in Nigeria shows that the Kaduna State varsity is the cheapest at N26,000. This of course has implications for sustainable running of the varsity and retention of top class academic staff.
None can dispute that quality education comes at a cost.