eku_bear:

2ndThought: I'm a fan of the IB system. We have something here similar called AP exams. And now that I think of it, there are some IB high schools here, and some which even offer both.
There are some models which work very well in Nigeria too. This Loyola Jesuit College, for example.
I don't think finding a good model is the difficulty so much as:
A) funding it
B) privatizing it so that the government doesn't directly administer it (and thus screw it up).

You know what, Dapobear? I would rather leave the current SSCE system as it is .
All other examination systems - AP, IB   A LEVELS- should be left to the private sector.
They are ALREADY successfully running such systems so THERE IS NO need for any government funded or prompted scheme.

eku_bear:

Oh, I've agreed with both of your points from the start. Maybe I've not explicitly said this before (I thought I did, though).

Something like exams every 2-3 years from grades 1 through 12, perhaps then at 8th grade the bottom 20-30% or so of 8th graders sorted into more technically oriented high schools that offer practical training (plumbing, electrical work, carpentry, mechanical work, etc).

Rough sketch, but probably not too far from a very good solution.

YEP IT IS A ROUGH SKETCH  but I see the blueprint of a feasble program there.

However I have to say that certain people here are missing the point and failing to see the bigger picture.
It is not all about manpower training and education important as these things are. These things are merely the demand side of the employment equation.
Nobody has mentioned how the economy can increase the quantum of goods and services produced, consumed and exported.- That is the supply side of the employment equation.

Until Nigeria begins to produce enough creative home grown enterpreneurs and daring investors all these demand side policies will not lead to a reduction in formal unemployment and poverty.

Like you@eku_bear, I am prepared to examine possibilities for funding while arguing the current system needs to be taken apart.

Thanks for your @tensor777,

The argument is indeed circular since your own reasons for introducing the IB system are based on premises which I don't agree with.
You are saying that the fact that 75% of students do not get the required grades for university admission is a bad thing? I say it is not as not everyone can or should go to university

In case you missed it, I was not kidding earlier when I described a failure rate of 75% as a human-rights issue; for the simply reason that society become even more improverished because so many of our youth are considered failures!
We are talking about an issue that has far reaching ramifications here, one  that invariably shapes socio-policy whether you believe it or not.

I spent quite a bit of time studying the English educational system we framed ours upon and understand a lot of the struggles which ushered in the fairer system we see today.
You need to be concerned that 75% of students who sit an exam fail it year after year, if you see education as a fundamental human right.
If you ask most folks who schooled in England prior to 1954, they'll describe a 3-tier system which had students being branded as [b]eternal failures [/b]at age 11, because they failed grammar school exams.
At 11, folks knew if they were destined for a life in in the world of capentry or the the mines,  and so on.
Is this what your consider fair and just system? Think about the 75% failure rate which you wished away with a magic wand.
What are about slow-achievers, eh? What future do you map out for them?

Just like the welfare system which most people assume was always present in England, but which was borne of the struggle for a fairer system after WWWII, the education act of 1954 introduced greater equity by providing a genuine alternative to the grammar school (gold) standard.
John Prescott (Deputy PM to T.Blair) was one notable 11-plus failure who made good his blighted childhood; there were many others who never succeeded.

Lets be clear in that the exams could indeed be structured in such a way that as many as 50% of students get 5 credits in subjects including English and Maths.
And then what? They take UME But after this JAMB would still need to whittle down  the successful  candidates to an acceptable number. So what is the point?
Another point which seems to have escaped most people here is that there are NECO AND WAEC exams taken in june and november. So an unsuccessful candidate can stiil reach the requisite university admission standard by registering for and passing as many exams as possible over a calendar year. At the end of the day in any one calendar year these boards are able to produce more than enough candidates with 5 or more credits.
So in that wise there is absolutely no need to dumb down the current system of selecting candidates for university admission.

No one is suggesting dumbing down the current system (it already is).
Rather, what is being proposed is an alternative that caters for all abilities; one which also recognises most competitor-nations do not produce 19 year Bsc (Hons) graduates.

We also need to test numeracy and literacy skills of all students at different stages of their primary and secondary school education.

I see this line of reasoning persists, despite my earlier correction about the narrow scope these 2 strands form within the system you referred me onto.
Look, I would concede it is fine to have a private company administering these tests in schools, to reduce attendant costs, but see little merit in running them beyond age 11 (primary schools).

2ndThought:

n case you missed it, I was not kidding earlier when I described a failure rate of 75% as a human-rights issue; for the simply reason that society become even more improverished because so many of our youth are considered failures!
We are talking about an issue that has far reaching ramifications here, one  that invariably shapes socio-policy whether you believe it or not.

The problem is that we only have a certain amount of money and thus slots for college available. It would be nice if 100% could pass and gain admittance, but we don't have the money to let everyone do so.
To be very concrete, if we have only enough money for 100 slots, and 10,000 people take the exam, what do you suggest we do? Obviously, 9,900 are going to have to fail, will they not?
Or is it just the name that bothers you? We could call the top 100 people "high pass", the next 8000 "low pass", then the bottom 1900 "fail." But if only 100 people are going to get in, what is the difference between a low pass and a fail?

Even more importantly. . . not everyone is bright enough to go to college. Not trying to be an @ss, but that is just reality. There is no point trying to send a guy who cannot do 6th grade math to college. What will he gain from the experience? It is a waste of time and money.

2ndThought:

I see this line of reasoning persists, despite my earlier correction about the narrow scope these 2 strands form within the system you referred me onto.
Look, I would concede it is fine to have a private company administering these tests in schools, to reduce attendant costs, but see little merit in running them beyond age 11 (primary schools).

You need testing so that everyone can know which schools are doing well and which are not. You as a parent will use this information to decide where you want to send your kids (if your kid has the choice of the school that tops the nation in the exams versus the one that is near the bottom, which would you send them to?) The government will use this information to know which under-performing schools need to be investigated and possibly taken over. Employers will use this information. Universities will use this info.

eku_bear:

The problem is that we only have a certain amount of money and thus slots for college available. It would be nice if 100% could pass and gain admittance, but we don't have the money to let everyone do so.
To be very concrete, if we have only enough money for 100 slots, and 10,000 people take the exam, what do you suggest we do? Obviously, 9,900 are going to have to fail, will they not?
Or is it just the name that bothers you? We could call the top 100 people "high pass", the next 8000 "low pass", then the bottom 1900 "fail." But if only 100 people are going to get in, what is the difference between a low pass and a fail?
Even more importantly. . . not everyone is bright enough to go to college. Not trying to be an @ss, but that is just reality. There is no point trying to send a guy who cannot do 6th grade math to college. What will he gain from the experience? It is a waste of time and money.

LOL. Now you have decided to take off the gloves and become hard hitting AND tough talking.  
You are right. It is what it is. It is life. In any thing we do there must be a place for winners and a place for losers.
But crucially the losers in one area can go on to become champions in another quite unrelated area. Was every EPL footballer a roaring success at school? No. But look at how much fame and fortune they have now.

Yep, your sports example is excellent. I wish I'd worked on my point guard skills from age six onwards in addition to just reading books. At the very least I feel I could have been good enough to play 4 years of D-1 ball and then have a career in Europe. Pay there is like $400k-500k+/year, if I'm not mistaken. Certainly a lot better a proposition than 99% of jobs one will get fresh from college.

I understand the objections of Nigerians though to this though. It is easy for you and I abroad to say these things when there are multiple paths to success. In Nigeria, the options are more limited, penalties for failure a lot harsher. (In the US if you do poorly in high school, you'll still get a job at the mall which pays probably $8-13/hour. That is enough money to enjoy life with.)

I guess this is why the correct solutions are going to be politically unpopular. Who wants to vote for a politician who says that 30% of 8th graders will be sent to technical high schools? Or that only 5 or 10% of high school graduates will be encouraged to go to college?

@ eku_bear

The problem is that we only have a certain amount of money and thus slots for college available. It would be nice if 100% could pass and gain admittance, but we don't have the money to let everyone do so.
To be very concrete, if we have only enough money for 100 slots, and 10,000 people take the exam, what do you suggest we do? Obviously, 9,900 are going to have to fail, will they not?
Or is it just the name that bothers you? We could call the top 100 people "high pass", the next 8000 "low pass", then the bottom 1900 "fail." But if only 100 people are going to get in, what is the difference between a low pass and a fail?

Even more importantly. . . not everyone is bright enough to go to college. Not trying to be an @ss, but that is just reality. There is no point trying to send a guy who cannot do 6th grade math to college. What will he gain from the experience? It is a waste of time and money.

But this post misses this essence of a testing system altogether.
I am all for a system that tests students according to their abilities, hence my prescription of the IB system which allows you to opt out a different stages. I could have sworn you understood this going by your earlier posts.
The problem with WAEC is you either sit it (regardless of your abilities) or you don't; there really is no middle ground.
This is not only unfair but serves to promote the ills I mentioned in an earlier post.

By all means let's test our students, but let's be fair in so doing. Simple.
For clarity let me re-state the 2 points I have maintained and sought to clarify at different stages (in relation to WAEC):
(1) The tests are outdated and not fit for purpose, due to inherent flaws which results in too many ill-fitting questions being recycled (not sure about the most recent years)
(2) The JJS/SSS system, which culminates in WAEC exams, needs to be scrapped for a fairer system (and I have proposed one) which recognises and accredits all abilities.
If it a student is only capable of a middle school diploma, let's give him just that, while allowing more able students to avail of more challenging options

@eku_bear,

You need testing so that everyone can know which schools are doing well and which are not. You as a parent will use this information to decide where you want to send your kids (if your kid has the choice of the school that tops the nation in the exams versus the one that is near the bottom, which would you send them to?) The government will use this information to know which under-performing schools need to be investigated and possibly taken over. Employers will use this information. Universities will use this info.

Sure they will.
But what exactly is the quibble here?
Literacy forms an integral part of most language and literature curricula, ditto numeracy in Mathematics.
What would be the point in testing numeracy across the board for all 16 year olds, in isolation from trigonometry, algebra, data handling (statistics) - strands of the curriculum @tensor777 referenced earlier by mentioning key stage tests (while conflating issues in an obvious manner)

Your think most graduates can compete at numeracy tests with the boys who run after cars street-hawking in Oshodi, huh?
I should know, I reviewed studies taken in different parts of the world.
Is that the skill you would rather we waste money testing?
I said it was fine to do this up to age 11 in a formal setting, since there are only so many ways you can add/subtract numbers! What do you find contentious here?
Beyond this point, it has to be tested implicitly. Simple.

2ndThought:

@eku_bear,
Sure they will.
But what exactly is the quibble here?
Literacy forms an integral part of most language and literature curricula, ditto numeracy in Mathematics.
What would be the point in testing numeracy across the board for all 16 year olds, in isolation from trigonometry, algebra, data handling (statistics) - strands of the curriculum @tensor777 referenced earlier by mentioning key stage tests (while conflating issues in an obvious manner)
Your think most graduates can compete at numeracy tests with the boys who run after cars street-hawking in Oshodi, huh?
I should know, I reviewed studies taken in different parts of the world.
Is that the skill you would rather we waste money testing?
I said it was fine to do this up to age 11 in a formal setting, since there are only so many ways you can add/subtract numbers! What do you find contentious here?
Beyond this point, it has to be tested implicitly. Simple.

Second Thoughts what are you going on about. You think literacy and numeracy tests are not fully graded according to stage of educatiion.
Anyway you should know that numeracy tests for secondary school students KS3, KS4 have gone far far beyond simple minded arithmetic questions. Seriously you think they would ask a year 10 student to multiply 2 numbers together??
Same is true for literacy tests.
Anyway the point is that at each of the KEY STAGES the authorities in England have the explicit information to determine whether overall targets are being met to evaluate the performance of failing schools and provide parents a means by which the stsndard of schools can be assessed.
At a more immediate level the tests are used to grade students and assess their numeracy and literacy progress. Thus indeed students in the same year are not just lumped together but are classified according to progress made in the tests.

@tensor777,
I offered you a way out by letting the matter rest much earlier on but you keep bringing it up.

Anyway the point is that at each of the KEY STAGES the authorities in England have the explicit information to determine whether overall targets are being met to evaluate the performance of failing schools and provide parents a means by which the stsndard of schools can be assessed.

Honestly, it would not hurt if you did a little more digging to gain a better handle on what constitutes literacy and numeracy in relation to the English Schools Curriculum.
In particular look out for those strands I mentioned, if you are constrained by time.
I know this turf, trust me. I might have been regarded as an authority myself at one point

^^Well I just don't know where you are going with this seemingly circular argument. There seems to be know point to it.
Anyway it is not by force that I  should share your views and I would not as you seem to have an ideological axe to grind which is out of place on this thread.
For the record I support literacy and numeracy testing in schools and these should be done separately from external or internal exams.

eku_bear:

You need testing so that everyone can know which schools are doing well and which are not. You as a parent will use this information to decide where you want to send your kids (if your kid has the choice of the school that tops the nation in the exams versus the one that is near the bottom, which would you send them to?) The government will use this information to know which under-performing schools need to be investigated and possibly taken over. Employers will use this information. Universities will use this info.

This summarizes the advantages of testing. In essence it says that testing enhances the decision making ability of all the education stakeholders.

Dumbness is dumbness. if you dont have the priority to get work done or the light to get work done thats fine; but God didn't give everyone brain.

Only in Nigeria will families living in villages with kids that have no abject sense of even how to read or even write tell you that they are going to school. You'll see them, sisi eko and brotha femi's and all - no studying, no learning - just wearing the latest fashion, wanting to be a rapper, paying to get passed to the next class and then BAM!!!, its time to take WAEC and they FAIL. Will you now blame NEPA? or blame Fashola or Blame Goodluck?

I'm waiting for someone to put up an histogram and prove me wrong, You'll see that just 10 years ago, students were doing better because they did what - THEY STUDIED!!!!! With the advent of the internet, everyone now wants to be a rap  WHY?

And don't start with that - no money poor people crap. Nigerians are smart, very smart.

Hello fellow nairalanders, i am a diaspora Nigerian, i have been following this forum for a while now, the issue 79.6% of Nigerian kids failing WAEC caught my attention, this is a shame and its shows how lazy the ministry of education and its minister are. Now way forward, the whole ministry staffs and the minister should be ashamed of themselves and should resign as needed. Nigerian educational system need a total overhaul because that is where the Nigerian future lays.

I wonder what the profile of the typical nigerian secondary school student is.

79.6% Students Fails Again In Waec Exams

That's exactly the reason why. A Poorly constructed sentence like the headline above

owowalapo:

Dumbness is dumbness. if you dont have the priority to get work done or the light to get work done thats fine; but God didn't give everyone brain.

Only in Nigeria will families living in villages with kids that have no abject sense of even how to read or even write tell you that they are going to school. You'll see them, sisi eko and brotha femi's and all - no studying, no learning - just wearing the latest fashion, wanting to be a rapper, paying to get passed to the next class and then BAM!!!, its time to take WAEC and they FAIL. Will you now blame NEPA? or blame Fashola or Blame Goodluck?

I'm waiting for someone to put up an histogram and prove me wrong, You'll see that just 10 years ago, students were doing better because they did what - THEY STUDIED!!!!! With the advent of the internet, everyone now wants to be a rap  WHY?

And don't start with that - no money poor people crap. Nigerians are smart, very smart.

Ode!

It has been going on for a long time, since the late seventies.

It's as a result of only one factor - neglect. Neglect by elected government, period.
I think everybody has forgotten about the youth. The very fabric of society does not cater to the needs of the younger generation. The school system in itself is not a problem, at least not on paper, but there's nobody in government who even cares about implementing the many policies. Since 1999, the civilians have done nothing to improve education, but has continued to starve the sector of funds for development, in fact even seeing an opportunity to further exploit Nigerians through the proliferation of mushroom private schools.

Consider the so-called UBE, which should guarantee nine years of primary and post-primary education. Is it even funded by the government? Is the government working to maintain any standards in the institutions? Are they building more schools, training and employing more teachers, in parallel with the growing population? What about the rural areas, is government ensuring that they get equal access to information? What exactly has any post-military government, from OBJ to GEJ, done for education in Nigeria? Zero. Rather they add more confusion by creating a useless examination called NECO, to complement the WAEC. How that has helped anything I am struggling to understand.

I went to school during the real free education years, before the civilians showed up. The army boys didn't have a problem with funding even university education, at least I still paid less than 200 naira, during the Abacha years. Now we have civilians, and an unprecedented oil windfall. We also  have well-educated politicians, we have even had two academics now as president. How much of the oil wealth has gone into education in the last 12 years? Zilch. And we like to say the military boys are illiterates. How ironic.

AjanleKoko:

It's as a result of only one factor - neglect. Neglect by elected government, period.
I think everybody has forgotten about the youth. The very fabric of society does not cater to the needs of the younger generation. The school system in itself is not a problem, at least not on paper, but there's nobody in government who even cares about implementing the many policies. Since 1999, the civilians have done nothing to improve education, but has continued to starve the sector of funds for development, in fact even seeing an opportunity to further exploit Nigerians through the proliferation of mushroom private schools.

Consider the so-called UBE, which should guarantee nine years of primary and post-primary education. Is it even funded by the government? Is the government working to maintain any standards in the institutions? Are they building more schools, training and employing more teachers, in parallel with the growing population? What about the rural areas, is government ensuring that they get equal access to information? What exactly has any post-military government, from OBJ to GEJ, done for education in Nigeria? Zero. Rather they add more confusion by creating a useless examination called NECO, to complement the WAEC. How that has helped anything I am struggling to understand.

I went to school during the real free education years, before the civilians showed up. The army boys didn't have a problem with funding even university education, at least I still paid less than 200 naira, during the Abacha years. Now we have civilians, and an unprecedented oil windfall. We also  have well-educated politicians, we have even had two academics now as president. How much of the oil wealth has gone into education in the last 12 years? Zilch. And we like to say the military boys are illiterates. How ironic.

best post so far!!

to be sincere entertainment is too much for our youth, so i suggest that we should caution ourselves

;d

^^
Can you post the source of the article you copied?
It has some interesting information I'd like to look at in more. Some of the assertions are curious. Last I knew, Ghanaians, Kenyans, Namibians, or South Africans didn't employ foreign English teachers in their schools. These countries have a markedly higher literacy rate than Nigeria, and are perceived (not research, just hearsay) to be better English speakers than Nigerians. It would be nice to also review historical performance of our fellow West African members of WAEC in English Language, to see if they also have the same decline during the period.

The article says between 2000 and 2009, the pass rate in English has declined steeply from 20% to 2%. That kind of lends credence to my idea that education has experienced a significant decline since the military left. My assertion is that funding has all but disappeared from the public education sector in the last eleven years. Your info just put some strength in my view.

;d

http://fafunwafoundation.tripod.com/fafunwafoundation/id8.html

The Teaching of English
English, as indicated much earlier, has for well over a century now continued to enjoy the pride of place in the nation's educational system. Thus, whereas indigenous languages are rarely given more than three lesson periods a week on the school time-table, English never has less than five periods, and may even be given as many as seven or eight periods particularly in schools that prepare students for the Oral English examination. Avidly patronised by commercial publishers,the language enjoys a profusion of pedagogical materials, and in this respect contrasts sharply with the indigenous languages, the vast majority of which lack enough materials for teaching them as L1 even for a few years in Primary School.
Nevertheless, the teaching of the language in the nation's schools has its own problems too, just as the teaching of the indigenous languages does, as indicated above. By far the most serious of such problems has to do with the quality of the teachers available for teaching the language. Nearly all such teachers are L2 speakers. Few L2 speakers who were themselves taught by other L2 speakers who, in their turn, had learned the language necessarily imperfectly from other L2 speakers of English in the nation's schools today have a good enough command of the written and spoken forms of the language, particularly the latter, that they could impart with confidence to their pupils. To make matters worse still, most such teachers have no training in Contractive Linguistics and therefore are unable to understand and consequently devise effective pedagogical strategies for combating the mostly mother-tongue induced kinds of learners' errors that recur in their pupils' written and oral performances in the language.
Another problem besetting the teaching of English relates to the books that are available locally in the language. Although the country has come a long way in regard to the production of locally written texts in English, a lot of books particularly for children nevertheless still have to be imported from abroad. And as such books are written and meant for other cultures than ours, one of their glaring shortcomings as books for the nation's schools is their cultural inappropriateness.

fstranger,
such an unrealistic argument. we should start importing british teachers. really. are you ok?  
even if we do that, wouldn't it require increased investment in the education system? which goes back to the basis of Ajanlekoko's point.

I don't know about the military vs civilian govt side but what I know is that with less state control (maybe due to IMF policies or increased capitalist ideas or just plain indolence on the part of our leaders),  there is less investment in education and other public infrastructure. whereas there is usually more state control under military govts.
but that aside and even if there isn't a difference, the fact is that govt has neglected the education system.

I was glad Ajanlekoko mentioned the free education system. i'm sure it was of better quality at its inception. but then if you introduce free education, more kids will go to school including those who come from poorer backgrounds and therefore need more support. now if the quality of this free education system deteriorates or fail to keep up with the demand, this just greatly maximizes the problem and public secondary schools become an alternative to the streets rather than an educational institution.

@fstranger1,
WAEC-style plagiarism?
I am quite disappointed.

@AjanleKoko
See the link I provided

2ndThought:

@fstranger1,

WAEC-style plagiarism?

You wish!


I contributed to the article, so i do not feel any need to reference it.


I raped WAEC!

@fstranger1,
And I suppose this explains why you deleted the 2 posts which made reference to it (the article)?

Should we write to the Prof credited as the real author (http://ng.linkedin.com/pub/oladele-awobuluyi/a/b67/238) to find out more about your contribution?

Yes! you can if you want


However, the real thing is Was Fafunwa right?

I have stack of articles written by Fafunwa over the years and I can tell you that his idea is the best thing to ever happen to Nigeria.

We just need our politicians to implement his ideas!

I find this hard to believe, why are students
failing This is unlike Nigeria,

Education in Nigeria is Like Breathing in Naija,
Nigerians more than less know the consequences of not going to school

Anyway my relatives passed and some other people i know did well,

This looks like attention grabbing headlines,

Something is not right here,

The EDU-DEPT is looking for more money!!!

@fstranger1,

Yes! you can if you want


However, the real thing is Was Fafunwa right?

I have stack of articles written by Fafunwa over the years and I can tell you that his idea is the best thing to ever happen to Nigeria.

We just need our politicians to implement his ideas!

Oladele AwobuluyI, who wrote the article the article you referenced is right on the money.

When he posits that

[t]he teaching and [b]examination syllabuses for the language in Primary and Secondary Schools would appear to be over ambitious and therefore inappropriate for those two levels. Thus, primary school children being prepared for the Common Entrance Exam (used for determining admission into Secondary Schools) are expected to be able to tell, for instance, what verb forms, whether singular or plural, the English conjunctions "and" and "as well as" require, a matter which even most adult native speakers of English would not know for certain and would therefore tend to avoid[/b]

, he is arguing some of the same points I have made all along in regarding the current flawed system.
Note the emphasis I have placed on examination syllabuses

Further on in the same article, you read: "

[a]nother problem besetting the teaching of English relates to the books that are available locally in the language. Although the country has come a long way in regard to the production of locally written texts in English, a lot of books particularly for children nevertheless still have to be imported from abroad."

This is where the issue of literacy, which another contributor brought into sharp focus comes into play.
Most textbooks written for 11year olds are pitched toward those with a reading age of 12.75years. This is fine as 'reading age' is usually at least a couple of years higher than chronological age at that stage.
The problem is, we don't know if most of our 11year olds ever attain this required standard before leaving primary school, before setting them up for a fall 5 years down the road.

^^^^

The article was spot on, you need to read up on how the Whites squashed the use of Yoruba language as the medium of instruction in schools in the SW. It was an eye opener.


Fafunwa did more that just create the 6-3-3-4 system.

He is indeed an enigma.

He has done more, IMO, than any other Nigerian is shaping and trying to make Nigeria a better palce. He was indeed dedicated to the Nigerian state, more than anyone in history. Too bad, most people do not know about him