The Yobe state government, last week, took a decisive step towards arresting the descent to unacceptable levels of educational performance of its students in the public senior secondary school examinations with the doubling of the salaries of classroom teachers in the state.

The State Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Sidi Yakubu Karasuwa, in Damaturu, the state capital, said the state took the step to offer an “incentive” to teachers in order to revamp the ailing educational sector in the state. He explained that the state governor approved the incentive because of the belief that teachers and education in the state had been neglected for decades. The improved pay package is coming with opportunities for training of teachers at the National Mathematical Centre, Abuja, and other relevant institutions.

At a first glance, it is easy to pooh pooh the astronomical pay increase for teachers in Yobe. This view of the state government’s largesse to teachers cannot be ruled out, especially given the general poor image of teachers in the country and the widely–held view that the problem of poor performance of students in the public examinations is partly a reflection of a lack of devotion to their jobs by teachers. It can also be rightly argued that no study has been done to determine that poor educational performance in the state is traceable to teacher’s’ pay, to justify the astronomical increase.

A deeper look at the critical state of education in the state, however, would provide more insight into the desperation of the government to do all that is within its power to overhaul the sector. The pathetic situation on the ground in Yobe today is that less than 10 per cent of the 15,000 students who sat for the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examinations (SSCE) in 2007 had the five credits that could qualify them for university education.

Although this situation is not peculiar to Yobe state, as some other states have similar poor results and the performance of Nigerian students in the examinations in recent years have been dismal as confirmed by the West African Examination Council chiefs, the effort by the state government to take a radical step on the problem indicates the seriousness with which it views the problem.

Actually, there is no gainsaying the fact that the education sector in Nigeria is in dire need of well thought out, all embracing strategies to rescue it from the brink of collapse. The view that the sector is in need of emergency intervention tactics is popular and accepted as given. Recently, state education commissioners from the 19 Northern States and Abuja converged in Ilorin, the Kwara state capital, to discuss the situation. The submission of the Kwara State Commissioner for Education, Alhaji Bolaji Abdullahi, who was the host state commissioner for the event, was the need for an emergency in the sector. His state also has on-going reforms to better position education in the state.

Kebbi state was also recently reported to have set up a 12-man committee, with six professors, to study, analyze and recommend ways of overhauling its educational system. Other states have one reform or the other to put education on a sound footing.

The initiative to improve the fortunes of teachers in Yobe, therefore, should be seen as part of a gamut of reforms to help students of the state achieve better results in public examinations.
But, beyond the doubling of teachers’ salaries, the government still has a lot of work to do to ensure that other critical problems of the educational sector are identified and tackled. For example, it is important for the government to determine if teachers’ poor pay has been a de–motivation for effective performance of their duties. Other factors need to be addressed. For example, the state administration should be asking itself if the teachers have the appropriate qualifications and teaching skills and if they are serious-minded and committed to their jobs as teachers.

This is important because paying these teachers more when they lack the basic skills and are not committed to their jobs may not necessarily improve their performance on the job. The state also has to determine if the schools in the state have the required facilities – like laboratories, libraries and the like as the teachers cannot perform any magic in the absence of these.

It is also important to determine and improve on the level of discipline and administration in the state schools. The effort to improve educational performance must of necessity include the enforcement of a disciplined devotion to teaching and effective administration of the schools to ensure that teachers are in the classrooms, as and when due, and that the students are at their desks.

The environment is which the students learn is also important. It is necessary to inculcate in students the habit of studying through enforcement of adequate “prep” hours during which students are made to engage in compulsory study. In an educational emergency such as the nation has on its hands today, this could even be extended to day students.

Attention also has to be paid to strict adherence to the syllabi for different subjects, to ensure that the students are being taught topics that they will be required to answer in examination halls. The syllabus must be adequately covered and past questions treated to make the students familiar with expected questions.

Students must also be helped to acquire and read required textbooks. The Yobe State government and others that are desirous of improving the performance of their students in WAEC should make an extra effort to obtain the Chief Examiner’s Reports on performance in each of the subjects for the relevant teachers so that they can know before hand the areas in which students typically have problems and concentrate on helping them overcome these difficulties. Employing senior teachers who are or have had experience, as WAEC examiners will help to demystify the principles by which examination answer scripts are scored.

Beyond these, students at all levels in Nigeria must be motivated to put in their best. They need to be made to see that education is a major ladder to success in life and that the way to climb that ladder is through consistent hard work and not through examination malpractices.
Yobe teachers, no doubt, have a good deal, from the state government. It is expected that they will reciprocate the good gesture with a greater devotion to their duties, which should be reflected in improved performance of students in future WAEC senior secondary school examinations.

Given the dismal overall performance of students in these examinations, which saw only 325,754 candidates, represents 25.54 per cent of 956,497 candidates whose results for the examination in May/June 2007 were initially released, scoring credits in English Language, Mathematics and three other subjects, secondary schools across the country will do well to pay attention to reasons for poor performance in its examinations given by WAEC in its Chief Examiners’ Reports. These have been identified to include students’ poor command of English Language to express themselves, poor knowledge of laboratory procedures, poor calculative ability and handling of bio statistical data and general inadequate preparation for the examinations.

These shortcomings should be remedied so that the students can post better performances in the years ahead.