Basic education designed to enhance skills acquisition – UBEC scribe
By GABRIEL DIKE
Tuesday, November 14, 2006

The Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), Professor Gidado Tahir, has said that the nine-year basic education will enhance the skills acquisition of school pupils and check the influx of students seeking admission into tertiary institutions as they would be equipped to establish their own businesses.

Professor Tahir told Daily Sun that misinformation about the programme, its curriculum, classrooms problem in the states, enrolment of pupils and early childhood education would soon be a thing of the past.

According to him, the Federal Government has shown commitment to the success of the UBE and nine-year basic education programme through funding and that state governments should support the programme with its counterpart funding while the problems of classrooms, teachers and other facilities would be overcome.

Curriculum for the nine-year basic education
The teachers should not worry, they should continue with the existing curriculum. What the Nigeria Educational Research Development Council (NERDC) has done was to come up with the number of curriculum options which they tabled before the National Council on Education. The council has done some modifications. That is the way this curriculum will go to the field and be implemented until everything is finalised.

Now the final vision of the new curriculum will go to NCE meeting in December. So, there is no way we can implement it because it has not even been approved. We still continue with the existing curriculum. When it is approved by the National Council on Education, the implementation of the curriculum will start with primary one and junior secondary school one while the arms will continue with the existing curriculum.

Report on UBE enrolment nationwide
I will not be able to say precisely what is happening, because the programme has just started . There is no way I can give you the figure,we get data from the states and some states are still in the process, they have not concluded. I have heard that others have introduced some examinations for the purpose of selection. States have their own way of handling the admission process. So, I am not in a position to say precisely what is on ground until I get reports from the states but for now I don’t have the total enrolment figure.

Expected graduation of UBE products and admission crisis
At the end of UBE ( basic education), we are not saying that all the children should seek admission into the university. We are saying that there should be other avenues such as vocational and technical education that children can go to learn.

And at the end of the vocational education, they can decide to establish their own businesses or at the end of junior secondary school, a Nigerian child of 15 years, who has acquired sufficient skills in certain areas, can go out and from the training received be able to set up his own business. So, it is not everybody that will go to university, that is what UBE is trying to correct. UBE is trying to correct this huge influence of everybody trying to acquire higher education. UBE is saying that at the end of the nine-year-basic education, there must be avenues. The National Policy on Education has provided these avenues, vocational and technical education and then formal/normal secondary schools. The normal secondary schools by percentage of admission it should not be more than 60,70. I think JAMB should be able to cope and in fact, we did not intend seeing everybody ( pupils) going to the university.

Early childhood education
That is why the Federal Government has insisted that it should intervene. Federal Government is saying that early childhood care education must be an integral part of our education system. Before, it was left for the private sector. We are just beginning, the policy just came into existence last year, so funds are provided by the Federal Government to encourage states to start the early childhood education. So, I think as time goes on, we will begin to see certain changes and improvement in this area.

Problem of classrooms
Using the Federal Government UBE intervention fund which is given to the states, I think the states are now very actively involved in improving and providing facilities and even new ones. There is no state that you go to without seeing a lot of UBE activities, especially in the contruction of classrooms, in a couple of months we will begin to see the results at the state level which will now be in a position to accommodate some of the serious problems in the primary and junior secondary schools.

Contributions of UBEC to the on going revision of NPE
The Universal Basic Education is an innovation. The National Policy on Education has not captured this new component of the education system. We are playing a very prominent role, we want to see UBE well reflected in the NPE. Reflection here, we want to see the idea of a compulsory nine-year basic education enshrined in the policy. We also like to see that the emphasis of the transition between primary and junior secondary schools is automatic.

These are things we will like to see properly reflected in the process. If it’s not there in the policy, then obviously something is missing, something fundamentally is missing about education system and that is what the stakeholders forum on the review of the NPE is considering. I think the various fora in all the six geo-political zones that considered the UBE, I think I will be able to identify it as a critical issue and they have introduced those things that ought to be introduced in the policy that will reflect the new UBE.

Misinformation on nine-year basic education
Well, people mistakenly assumed that when government is saying they are going to have a nine-year basic education, they thought that the first nine years will be in the same place, but the reality is that we are not changing the National Policy on Education, the policy is still intact. You can see from what we are considering at the stakeholders forum on the review, the emphasis of the distinction is still there. So, what government is trying to emphasise is that there is going to be a compulsory nine-year basic education. Government is simply saying that the academic is six years of compulsory primary education. In terms of quality, in terms of skills people acquire, it is not good enough, we need to extend it beyond that, that is why we have to do that by providing these facilities free of charge.

Commencement of nine-year basic education in September
The nine-year basic education commenced in September 2006 with automatic transition of primary school six and junior secondary school 1. So far, I think we can say that they had been fairly smooth in some part of the country but there are also certainly many problems. The problems emanated from the fact that some states didn’t have enough information and that was why when the Minister of Education decided to call for this extraordinary meeting of the Nation Council on Education ( NCE). It was during that meeting that we were able to really clarify many grey areas and many states were able to come up with implementation modalities based on our earlier submission.

Now, every state of the federation is aware of what needs to be done and they are doing it. The year 2006 is obviously going to be a little bit of a problem because the initial period of schedule of the problems as time goes on. I think next year, we will see a lot of smooth transition.