Reforming educational system to support development

The challenges facing the Nigerian economy at present underscores the need to revisit our education system starting from post primary education. As a country, we must begin to align our realities with the education that is required to support our economic requirements. Part of the reasons why we have challenges in the engagements of young people is the fixation towards university education.

Right now the country needs skilled individuals that can contribute directly to its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but at the moment young Nigerians are pushed into the university from the post primary environment without any evaluation of their capacities and desires to study and learn certain skills. A lot of our graduates who go into the NYSC scheme come out without capacities to be engaged and contribute to the economy.

Against this background, one of the key areas I am currently looking at, is a module called the Personality Attitudinal Skills Development (PASD). This module will allow the Nigerian nation to be able to evaluate a young person from the junior secondary cadre, as they are about crossing to the senior secondary. The evaluation should be done by educationalist, psychologists and career counsellors using a particular module. With this, they should be able to look at the students nine years of education to evaluate where the child should go.

The module is based on evaluating four factors, first; what is the need of the Nigerian economy at this point in time? Secondly what is the personality of the student, what is the attitude of the individual child and their capacity of education based on standardised test in the educational sphere? That would guide the counsellor to recommend a direction in which the student can flourish and be able to have a long term benefit for their own good. This can be done in consultation with the students’ parents or guardians as well as the school teachers who knows the child best.

So the module is basically an evaluation form which is designed and takes into account four factors, the need of the economy, the preferences and capacities of the individual, the area in which that person lives and the immediate need of that particular area. This means whether it is a farming environment, a manufacturing environment or a growing concern of a university environment. The module provides a long-term approach at providing sustainable economic empowerment to this young child. If the child has propensity to like designs and fashion or music and arts, but is struggling with the theoretic aspects of the subjects, we should look at that environment and encourage the child to go for a more technology type education, and not necessarily a university.

In this case, we should be looking from a polytechnic standpoint or from a school of arts standpoint, or from a trade school type of vocation. If a child likes computers and is good on the use of computers, there should be that urge to put that child in that stream as well. So the type or modules and the type of questioners that should be created should be broad enough to deal with the psychological, the educational, the attitudinal, the personality as well as the creative impetus of the individual child in consonant with parents and the school authorities as well, preferably teachers who are closely related with the child.

The PASD is a means for Nigeria to be able to realign its educational direction to be able to involve a very high level of capacity and knowledge base of our children so as to be able to give them a fighting chance in the 21st century. Right now the misalignment in the NYSC program is so great that majority of graduates that are produced, from upwards of three to five years are not engaged in any economic activity and when they do find economic activity the level of re-training that is required by employers makes the exercise a bit not worthwhile, whilst our economy is still reeling from the capacity and the inability for us to produce skilled labour. It is sad to have upwards of nine million graduates of Nigeria universities that are currently unengaged. Add that number to the number of unskilled and semi-skilled unemployed young people, then you will be talking upwards to 25 million people who are supposed to be the backbone of human capacity driven economy.

So for me the proposal is as follows: we need to develop a PASD module and we need to infuse our module to the Junior Secondary School system whereby from the crossing to Senior Secondary School, education, we actually identify the strength of each of our children who are at that point and place them using career guiding counsellors, into appropriate scheme that would allow them grow and use their human capacities, interests, attitude and personality to drive the stream that will profit the country short and long them.

The PASD is therefore, looking at four areas, which includes required skills, areas of demand, in what number and what sort of stream of education they would need. It basically looks at what are the demands and requirements of the Nigerian economy, that has to be clearly stated and identified and we need to know the skill set required to do the job. We need to know how many carpenters are required in the Nigerian economy, how many factory workers that have mechanical skills, how many auto mechanics are required, how many pilots, how many doctors, soldiers, how many farmers, agro-workers, extension service workers for agriculture, masseurs, painters, electricians are required in our economy and in which part of the country they are needed so that when we put our children in different streams, be it mono-technics, polytechnics, universities, technical centers, we would be fitting the right peg in the right hole.

For me the PASD is the way to go; it is a discussion that must happen now, it is a discussion that must happen at different levels involving stakeholders like the Ministry of Education, the NYSC, the manufacturers association, Ministry of Trade and Investment, the Ministry of Finance and the Presidency. This conversation needs to happen if we must reduce the challenges presently facing the country such as the rising cases of youth’s restiveness and the little or no productive capacity.

Michael Ataga Enahoro is a youths and enterprise development expert. He writes in from Abuja