The Nigerian education system has suffered serious setback in terms of quality. In the 50s and 60s, the primary, secondary and tertiary levels of the education sectors were reputed for high standard. Our certificates were rated high at local, national and international levels.The free education scheme of Chief Obafemi Awolowo placed Nigeria on the world map. But since the 70s, the table had turned and the performances of our students in the WASC/NECO examinations began to decline in quality. No wonder, Professor Oyewale Tomori, the pioneer Vice-Chancellor of the Redeemer's University in Ogun State said, 'that Nigerian education has been maltreated by successive Nigerian administrations since Independence, and that it is now in its worst state'.The reasons are not difficult to diagnose as the decline in standard is the result of neglect and abandonment by past administrations. The education budgets of many states showed a critical loss of political will to develop the sector. Governments' policies shifted to road constructions, security, health and electricity, with education in the rear and so schools began to experience acute shortage of qualified staff, instructional materials, funds and classroom buildings.The consequence of such neglect of the sector manifested in mass failure of candidates in WASC/NECO examinations at an unprecedented rate. The rate of wastes and unemployment became very high and no one bothered about all these. The woeful results were only discussed in the various legislative houses and commissions and yielded no results. Employers of labour began to complain about the quality of our certificates which became worthless. We now have 117 universities and nine others were recently approved!The score board on the West African School Certificate (WASC) for four consecutive years in the English Language and Mathematics are as follows: May/June 2009; of the 1,373,009 candidates, 25.92 per cent passed; May/June 2010, 24.9 per cent passed in 2011; of the 1,540,250 who sat for the examination, only 30.70 perr cent passed and 69.30 per cent failed.For the purpose of comparison, I wish to show the results of one of our star schools in Oyo State; 1984 (92.8per cent), 1985 (88.5percent), 1986 (94.1per cent), 1987 (95.9per cent), 1988 (94.7per cent) The result of this school is a representation of most of our schools in the 80s. We should aspire to go back to this glorious era of qualitative education.The efforts of the present administration in Oyo State are noteworthy. The governor adheres to the dictum; No teacher, no education. Within so short a time, he had established a strong cordial relationship with the Labour and most especially, the teachers. Those in service as well as those that have retired. He is bent on restoring the academic performances of schools. He has instituted weekend coaching programmes for the senior classes in our secondary schools; reviewed the salaries of the junior workers and has given a firm promise that the reforms would affect all cadres of the workforce. With these combant efforts, schools in Oyo State will soon regain their lost prestige and glory. His 2011/2012 budget also showed a balanced budget with a sizeable proportion devoted to educational rehabilitation.What else can we do to check the high failure rates in schools' The students of this generation have no time for reading and studies. They spend their whole time on vain pleasures. Most of them have no set goals for their lives. Schools should without delay bring back the READING CULTURE of those days.Teachers have taught students most of the things they need to pass their examinations, but they don't create time to read them up. The reading habits of those days should be revived in schools to stimulate reading habits in our schools.The FAILURE rate in English Language is usually very high as the classes are too large for effective teaching and assessments. The classes could be broken into ability categories with more time devoted to the good and average ones. The teaching of FUNCTIONAL not Traditional Grammar, should be introduced in schools. Children should have a grasp of the sentence structure before attempt at composition writing on a graduated way. Teachers should begin with one, two, three paragraphs to minimize the occurrence of errors. The various ASPECTS (Compositional Comprehensionl Summary) must be covered before the examination. Teachers of English must be WASC/NECO examiners.Mathematics is another disaster subject. Most students have a natural hatred for Mathematics. Teachers of Mathematics must handle such students with patience and understanding. Difficult concepts could be explained in the MOTHER TONGUE to make pupils love the subject.The subject must be related to LIFE to make it appeal to the students. Mathematics teachers must be WASC/NECO examiners. The students must be tutored on the importance of the two subjects in their CAREER. This is the duty of school counselors.INSPECTION of schools should be geared towards QUALITY. Most inspections today focus on collection of data and statistics with no bearing on the teacher's teaching competence. Inspectors of our generation were more concerned about the quality of the classroom teachers' work to enhance the quality of students' academic attainment. Samples of students' written work were also graded and evaluated. Celebrated inspectors like Mr Hunt Cook, WT. MaGkel, Mr LA. Akioge and Chief J.O. Ojo were noted for this system. Let us revive this system to enhance teacher proficiency. We also need to expand our curriculum to meet the contemporary needs of the nation. Total academic learning without vocations will do the nation no good.It is hoped that His Excellency, in his transformation agenda would deploy to schools some of the newly recruited 20,000 unemployed graduates with Teacher Education bias to improve the quality of staffing in our schools. It is also hoped that sooner or later, he would' embark on the construction of solid, low-cost classrooms to facilitate the decongestion of classes of our schools. Reviving the declined education standard in our schools, is a function of people who are interested in the repositioning of education in the state; including parents, teachers, students and philantropistsDr Fagbemi is one time Hon Commissioner of Education and ANCOPSS national president.
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