In Matthew 23:23-24, Jesus rebuked leaders of religion saying “you give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness”.
Same can be said today of our Minister of Education, Prof. Tahir Mamman whose present priority is to ban children under the age of 18 from writing school certificate examinations and gaining admission into tertiary institutions.
It is true that in principle and by simple calculation, an individual will be 12 years when he/she will be leaving primary school but as a teacher, Mamman should know that in the course of schooling, some pupils will show some level of brilliance much above their peers.
I was in primary school with Margret, I can no longer remember her surname. She was way ahead of every other pupil in our class. She eventually left for secondary school from primary four! And that was in 1974! My own son was given a double promotion while in primary school and entered secondary school at the age of nine.
What will be the fate of this category of pupils in Mamman’s scheme of things? How does Mamman plan to engage the current 16 year olds for the two years that they will be waiting to either write secondary school exit exams or gain admission into tertiary institutions? Or what will those 14, 15, 16 and 17 year olds who are currently in SS3 be doing for the number of years remaining for them to get to 18? How does he plan to engage them?
Secondly, there are too many things wrong with our education system that the issue of underage admission shouldn’t be on the priority list of the ministry or its administrators right now.
Mamman, a core northerner should concern himself with the astronomically increasing number of out of school children. The ministry has been deceiving itself that millions of children have been taken off the streets and enrolled in schools within the last one year.
He should endeavour to break the numbers down to states, local governments and particular schools so that we’ll be able to verify this assertion. Is it in Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Yobe, Borno, Niger or Benue that children have returned to classes despite raging banditry and terrorism?
Again, how many more teachers have been employed in the last one year to teach the touted increased number of enrolled pupils? How many more schools have been built? How many have been rehabilitated?
I tried to glance through the National Policy on Education just now and found out that age is not one of the priorities. Why would the ministry ignore all the priorities and concentrate on an inanity?
Many years ago, there was an attempt to arrest educational progress in the south so that the north could catch up. How has that worked? States, churches and individuals began to open their own universities.
Today, the gap is wider than ever before. Should Federal government again insist on arresting southern progress through this ill thought out idea of wasting at least two years in the lives of children of the south, parents will begin to register their children for international qualifying examinations.
According to experts, authorities in the education sector should concentrate on the following:
– *Inadequate funding*: Ensuring adequate funding for education to improve the quality of education.
– *Infrastructural facilities*: Providing adequate infrastructural facilities to support learning.
– *Professional teachers*: Ensuring the employment of more professional teachers to improve the quality of education.
– *Institutional corruption*: Fighting institutional corruption to ensure effective implementation of educational policies.
– *Security*: Ensuring adequate security in educational institutions to provide a safe learning environment.
– *Political will*: Encouraging political officeholders to have a positive political will towards the implementation of educational policies.
– *Continuity*: Ensuring continuity in commitment to policy implementation to achieve the objectives of the National Policy on Education.
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