A free school that sustains itself? Here’s how you can start one, tomorrow!

Salma is a hardworking girl who has just finished secondary school. She sat two exit examinations (NECO and WAEC).  However, when the results came out, her failure was a touch excessive – she flunked all the papers. Now she has become a statistic. She numbers among 91.5 percent of students from her state who failed […]

Salma is a hardworking girl who has just finished secondary school. She sat two exit examinations (NECO and WAEC).  However, when the results came out, her failure was a touch excessive – she flunked all the papers.
Now she has become a statistic. She numbers among 91.5 percent of students from her state who failed the West African Examinations Council exams that year. This means that she’s not going to a university or a polytechnic or a college of education. Like many girls who share her misfortune, she has no future. She could only hope for a good husband to knock on her door – however, even those are in short supply.
Except that Salma is different or to put it precisely, the school she attended sits on a different model. Facilitated by the course contents and her school, Salma started doing business when she was in school.  She is business savvy too.  Out of many businesses the school operated for the students, Salma particularly liked the dried fruit business. It’s easy; market is available and has very little investment – of US$130.
Want to start a free school? Want the school to run itself even though it’s free?  Teach a Man to Fish, a nonprofit based in the UK has an answer.  Read on.
The problem
Our children are getting so little out of primary and secondary education and the government has so little money to do anything meaningful, pushing many of us who are concerned to search for alternatives. The result being that, we may have to rethink the entire education model in Nigeria. So far, what’s clear is that using WAEC, NECO, JAMB, etc; as the ultimate goals of successful secondary education to measure the placement of students into tertiary institutions is no longer sustainable, nor desirable.
In one of my columns of April 2013, ‘Becoming algebra ninjas: Why Arewa may not fail ‘O’ level math again,” I shared some depressing statistics: “Only 20 percent passed the November/December 2010 West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE). That is, only 20.04 percent of the candidates obtained credit in English language, Mathematics and at least three other subjects. We’ve been recording a consistent pattern of mass failure in WASSCE for at least five years.  In 2008, only 23.54 percent of candidates who sat the same examination passed. In 2009, it was 21.96 percent. The May/June version of the same examination is not better by much. In 2012, the head of WAEC in Nigeria, Mr. Uwadiae,  announced that 38.81 percent out of the 1.67 million candidates who sat for the examination scored credits in at least five subjects, including English language and Mathematics; an increase of about eight percent from 2011.
“When it was reported in the news that only 17 out of the 18,000 secondary school students who sat for WASSCE and NECO in Gombe State passed, many thought the 17 was a typographical error,” Uwadiae stated. 
“Obviously it wasn’t, because other states in Nigeria share similar disturbing statistics and the governments don’t seem to know exactly how to remedy the problem. Last year, out of frustration, the Kwara State government slashed its grant for the payment of the National Examination Council (NECO) senior secondary examination from N80 to N13 million; this, according to the commissioner for education and human capital development, Raji Mohammed,  was on account of the mass failure of Kwara State students in the final year mock examinations –  of the 33,000 students who were to benefit from the grant, only 3,100 passed the mock examination set by the state government,” he elaborated.
What to do?
Teach a Man to Fish came as an answer to unsustainability of schools in developing countries. But we could stretch its model as an answer to unemployability of our secondary school graduates; in doing this, we also have the opportunity of giving confidence to our students that there is life after failing WASSCE.
How can a school be self-sufficient?
“The obvious answer would be to charge students fees; yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest that this serves to exclude those from poorer backgrounds,” Teach a Man to Fish writes in its brochure. “So what’s the alternative? A model that builds on the work already carried out in vocational schools. What are needed are schools that focus on ensuring their own financial sustainability, and in doing so increase the capacity of the education system – extending the benefits of an education to an ever greater number of students.”
The organisation pushes for a model where the school opens a number of businesses for the students while also integrating entrepreneurship contents into the curriculum. The students learn from the regular classes while also participating in the practical aspects of entrepreneurship. Most of the businesses require very low capital to start and since most are agriculture-based products, have ready market.
I see our schools running their vegetable gardens, dried fruit, brick making and solar stove businesses. Other simple businesses include fruit juice production, community cold store and so forth.
Beyond secondary schools
It appears Teach a Man to Fish focuses on secondary schools, but Professor Mustapha Zubairu and I are writing an academic conference paper which seeks to extend the model to other institutions. I’m reasonably confident any school can adopt this model – from Islamiyya to driving schools.
Where to go from here
The organisation has a rich website, www.teachAmanToFish.co.uk, where you can download all the documents you need – documents such as how to organise your school to how to write a business plan.
Beyond government
It’s hoped that diligent and patriotic individuals would run with this idea and not wait for government’s intervention. We already have community-run extra classes which prepare students for different examinations, some of them already free. I know of an Abuja-based patriot who travels to Yola in Adamawa State to organise such programmes. Why can’t we adopt this model to ensure the sustainability of such arrangements and skill acquisition of the students?