WASSCE Result: Reflection of a failed system

The Head of the National Office of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), Charles Eguridu, disclosed during a press conference in Lagos that only 529, 425 candidates representing 31. 28% of the over 1.6 million candidates whose results were fully processed obtained credit pass in five subjects including English and Mathematics. The immediate implication of […]

The Head of the National Office of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), Charles Eguridu, disclosed during a press conference in Lagos that only 529, 425 candidates representing 31. 28% of the over 1.6 million candidates whose results were fully processed obtained credit pass in five subjects including English and Mathematics.
The immediate implication of this abysmal performance is that only about 30% of the total number of candidates who wrote the May/June 2014 WASSCE qualifies for admission into universities and other tertiary institutions. This woeful result is coming after two consecutive years of improvement in the performance of students in the WASSCE; indicating that the success rate has once again gone down.
The 2012 and 2013 results of the May/June WASSCE which respectively had 38% and 36% success rate showed some level of improvement over what it used to be. In 2010, the success rate was as low as 23%. It worsened in 2004 when only 18% of the over 1 million candidates that sat for the May/June WASSCE obtained credit passes in five subjects including English Language and Mathematics.
Statistics of examination malpractices in recent years in addition to ‘miracle’ examination centers in parts of the country both insinuate that even the 30% of the candidates that obtained the required credit passes for admission into tertiary institutions may have been aided to attain that level of success. Given the poor state of public schools in Nigeria, most of the candidates that constitute the 30% success rate are likely to come from private schools where teaching and learning environment is relatively friendlier. It also suggests that majority of candidates from public schools would make up the greater part of the 70% failure in the 2014 WASSCE.
This awful performance of students was foreseeable from a report published on page 8 of Daily Trust edition of Tuesday July 8, 2014 in which an examination invigilator observed that ‘most senior secondary (SS) 3 students know nothing’; adding that many of them could not write anything on their answer scripts. ‘You reap’, they say, ‘what you sowed’. How could they write or answer questions correctly when they have become indolent at learning; spending so much time goggling, chatting, pinging, twitting, facebooking, whatsApping, instagraming or playing computerized games?
Modern gadgets of information technology have had negative impact on two basic school subjects (English and Mathematics) in Nigeria. Letter-writing, for instance, which provides avenues for students to improve upon their language skills, has almost been made archaic by GSM phones. Free access to the Short Message Service (SMS) facility on GSM handsets has created a wide gap between students of English and the grammatical rules of the language. Similarly, easy access to calculators on phones, computer systems and wrist watches has rather made students of Mathematics lazy and estranged to calculations. The advent of the internet has equally weakened literary passions in secondary school students of today who, unlike students of the 1950s-1970s, lack appreciable reading culture. Nowadays, students find it simple and effortless to download materials, cut and paste; and submit same as assignments without necessarily reading through the pages.
Students alone are not to blame for this high failure rate. Government and parents are equally guilty; if not more culpable. States more than other tiers of government take the larger portion of the blame for the shortcomings that have consistently led to mass failure of students in WASSCE. After all, Federal Government has just about 109 secondary (unity) schools (aka FGCs/FGGCs).
The lip-service paid to the education sector is a major challenge that cannot be isolated from the high failure rate in WASSCE. In Benue State, for instance, teachers resumed work only few months ago after eleven months of strike action. If those who were governors when Gabriel Suswan went to school had acted indifferently towards education, I wonder if he could have become the governor of Benue State today.  Anyway, history only repeated itself under Gabriel Suswan. Teachers in Benue State were on strike for 12 months under Governor AperAku’s civilian administration in the Second Republic.
The unfortunate state of education is actually replicated in many states of the federation. A report published on page 9 of Daily Trust edition of Thursday May 15, 2014 showed that about 31,000 boarding students in Zamfara State secondary schools sleep on bare floors or mats in their respective dormitories. In Niger State where government claims to have made education at the basic and secondary levels tuition-free, students in boarding schools spend substantial part of their study-time cooking meals to augment the official but grossly insufficient and most often non-nourishing meals. School libraries and laboratories (where they exist) are as empty as space; leaving them dry of materials, equipments and chemicals.
Low quality of teachers is part of the crisis of mass failure in WASSCE. The few available trained teachers are themselves products of a lowly standard of education. Some of the teachers are in fact not better than the students they teach. Not too long ago, about 1,300 teachers in Kaduna State failed a test prepared for primary four pupils as most of them scored below 25 percent. Only one out of a total of 1,599 teachers selected from across the state to write the test scored 75 percent! The modern though unfortunate trend of ‘extra lesson’ is also one obvious trait of a failed education system.
Another critical challenge is the lack of mechanism to adequately motivate qualified teachers to remain in the job. Whereas some teachers in England earn more than the British Prime Minister, even an ordinary politician (such as a councilor in the local government in Nigeria) sometimes with qualifications less than the basic teaching qualification of a teacher earns in four years what a teacher may not earn in a life-time! Most of those who possess teaching qualification(s) in the country today use teaching as a stepping stone to other jobs where they could earn better pay. Government must therefore consider teachers’ welfare as central to sustaining qualified teachers in their jobs. The higher the number of qualified teachers retained on the job, the less number of quack teachers would be found in teaching; and the greater our chances of attaining better WASSCE results.
The appalling result in WASSCE could also be a mirror image of parents who are too busy chasing money or power from north to south and west to east of the country; sparing little or no time for monitoring their children or wards’ school activities. Assuming that you are even able to acquire the wealth or power which you desperately sought, it would amount to wasted effort and time if you do not have a properly educated child to inherit and look after the wealth or succeed you to the throne.
May Allah (SWT) endow our leaders with conscience; imbue parents with a good sense of duty; and keep our children on the path of righteousness, amin.