03/05/2014
OSUN SCHOOL RECLASSIFICATION MADE EASY
The Primary School Leaving Certificate does not exist anymore in Nigeria. It has been abolished in the new national policy on basic education. That is the first word in this matter of school reclassification by the Aregbesola administration.
We are familiar with a system of six years in Primary school, three in Junior Secondary and three in Senior Secondary. Things are different now. The national policy on Universal Basic Education now calls for nine years of basic education spanning the first to the ninth year in school. This includes what used to be Primary 1 to 6 PLUS Junior Secondary 1 to 3. Call it Primary 1 to 9 if you like, but technically, we no longer have ‘Primary Education’ in our national education policy. That is why you no longer hear of UPE (Universal Primary Education), but we now have ‘Basic Education’ administered under the UBE. After nine years of Basic Education comes the Secondary Education spanning three years.
Things have changed fundamentally in the way Nigeria’s education is structured since president Obasanjo inaugurated the new UBE educational policy in 1999 and the enabling laws were signed in 2004. What we now have is nine years of basic education leading to the Junior Secondary Certificate of Examination. Since the passing of the UBE law in 2004, Nigeria no longer has the 6-3-3 system of education. We have the 9-3 system: Nine years of “Basic Education” which is free and provided by the Local government and States and supervised by the Universal Basic Education Commission, and three of “Secondary Education”. Back in the 1980s, we had the 6-5 system.
The new national policy on Universal Basic Education calls for “Unfettered access to nine (9) years of formal, basic education”, according to the policy paper setting forth the objectives of the UBE. States and Local Government Areas are in charge of Basic Education (spanning nine years) in Nigeria as administered through the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) (the Federal government only supports with 2% of the Consolidate Revenue Fund) and it is left to them to decide on how those nine years of basic education is strung out. In the case of Osun, the government decided to rename it Grades 1 through 9 and divide it up into three educational stages away from the two it used to be. It allows pupils to be grouped more accurately into age groups. This is in many ways similar to the educational stages adopted in the United States in many aspects.
Of the nine years, the first four years or Grades 1 to 4 is the first stage and is called Elementary School. An instant advantage of this grouping is that it makes the free school feeding programme of the state government easier to administer. The free feeding programme is meant for kids in the first four years of school. If the conventional six-year Primary school model is adopted, it means kids in the upper two classes will be forced to look on as Primary 1-4 children are being fed. That sort of atmosphere can prove negative, breeding petty hostility and general bad behavior among children. With the new arrangement, the entire school is served and no kid is left behind. The remaining five years of Basic Education is grouped into what is called the Middle School. From there the child proceeds to the next three years of Secondary education or what is called High School, by Osun’s new classification, giving a 4-5-3 system. In the United States, they have a 5-4-3 staging. Elementary is five years for children of ages five to ten, (Grades 1 through 5) Middle School is four years for kids between the ages of ten and sixteen (Grades 6 through 9) while 10th to 12th Grades is the High School. There are minor variations in ages of the pupils across states as each state adopts the type of classification or staging best suited to it. Brazil, China, Canada, France, Egypt, Israel and Italy are examples of nations with this type of educational stages. The United Kingdom and its associated states like Australia have only primary and secondary schools with no ‘Middle School’ stage – a pattern that understandably dominated our educational classification for decades until now.
The Future: The policy of free feeding programme for school children undertaken by the Aregbesola administration is perhaps the most significant act of our democracy since 1999. Though localized and limited, the implications of it are far reaching, ensuring a future populated by citizens who are empowered by education. That automatically reduces the chances of their being locked in poverty. More than any other single factor, the free feeding programme is responsible for giving the state the highest rate of school enrolment in Nigeria. It is a programme that will eventually be copied by all states that value education. Upon this basis alone and in the light of reasonable and prudent financial management, states that want to embark on this type of high dividend policy will have to consider reclassifying the first years of basic education to make the feeding programme smarter and easy to administer. The beginning has its challenges of course, distance, and redistribution of teachers, re-orientation of teachers, administrators and parents. The list goes on and it includes battling political opponents and scaremongers waylaying governments by running down such programmes, feeding on information gap in the citizenry. Yet it is the way for the future of education in Nigeria. It takes boldness and vision to commence but the payoff is really worthwhile for any society that values the exercise of the mind and development of character and learning. Again, the Aregbesola administration has blazed the trail, taking all the initial fire and fury of attacks that usually greets new ways and innovations from critics. It should be easier for those who want to follow and take advantage of all the advantages of the new educational staging.
