INDEPENDENT

The New Basic Education Curriculum
 
Y. Z. Yau xyzyau@gmail.com
Fri, 23 Nov 2007 00:00:00
   

On November 8, the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) held interactive meetings across the North West zone of country to sensitise various stakeholders on the new basic education curriculum. Similar meetings have also taken place in all the other zones. The meetings, on the basis of the one I attended in Kano, were structured into two sessions. The first part was taken by two presentations by the officials of the NERDC while the second part was the interactive session during which the stakeholders asked questions or offered comments.

The two formal contributions were first a presentation of the new curriculum itself and then a presentation of a booklet on Frequently Asked Questions. While the first presentation was to provide detailed information about the curriculum and its rationale, the Frequently Asked Questions was meant to anticipant the questions the stakeholders were likely to ask and ready made replies were provided.

Unfortunately the people who arranged the programme apparently did not prepare for the un-anticipated questions or so at least it appeared for the session I attended in Kano. The first un-anticipated question was why the new curriculum gave more weight to learning foreign languages (French in particular) than local languages. The curriculum has provided that French language is to be compulsory from primary 4. One of the presenters told a very interesting story about his experience in learning Igbo and how useful it had been to him, but this did not answer the question asked. While the story he told supported the question asked, it did not answer the actual question which was not about the importance of local languages but why should French language be given more importance than the local languages.

Someone asked that considering the new subjects the new curriculum is introducing what efforts has government put in terms of getting appropriate teachers. The team responded that the processes of producing teachers' guides, which will assist the teachers, have reached an advanced stage for all the subjects. While this was important information, it did not directly address the concern of the question. If we take the French Language for instance, where are we to get the teachers for all the schools? We still have no solution to the shortage of English language teachers in the country. The same fate awaits the introduction of computer studies. In this case we even have to deal with another challenge. In the context of generalized shortage of computer skilled people in the country, when you give computer training to teachers who are poorly paid, the tendency is for them to get other jobs with their newly acquired competitive edge. So while we need a massive training of all teachers in the new subject areas, we also need to address their salaries and other working conditions so as to be able to retain them in the system.

It seems to me also that there was very little, if any, consultation with the stakeholder during the design and articulation of the new curriculum. This explains the lukewarm attitude, if not outright hostile reception the new curriculum received from many of the teachers and school proprietors and administrators during the meeting In Dutse, Jigawa State. If the matter was a vote, the curriculum lost out as virtually all the participants expressed in one sense or the other, their rejection of it.

It was also this lack of initial consultation with stakeholders that made the president of the association of private school owners in Kano to ask a basic question: the basic education system is not changing the 6-3-3-4 policy, but what certificates should the schools be issuing and how many of these for schools that run classes from primary 1 to senior secondary school level? What name should the private proprietors call their schools? I remember a friend who told me that there was confusion among parents as to whether their children who had finished primary six were graduating or not.

The answer that came out with respect to certification was that after primary six, the schools can issue the primary leaving certificate. But why should they leave when the policy says that they are entitled to nine years of compulsory basic education?

By the time a representative of the Kano Education Resource Department (KERD) of the State's Ministry of Education had spoken on their phasing out plan, which was a means of making sure that junior secondary schools do not co-exist in the same premises with senior secondary schools, a new complication was added for the private schools that run the full streams of primary to senior schools. Will they have to separate the senior schools and locate them else where as the state governments are to do? Will they have to give them different names and set up different administrative and management structures? Issues and responses to these were not clear, and it was clear that these were not anticipated by the Frequently Asked Questions booklet. The possible implications of these ought to have been discussed with the proprietors.

There was also the cancellation of the national common entrance examination, since it had to give way because the transition from primary school to junior secondary school is automatic. Many state governments simply ignored the directive from the Federal Ministry of Education and replaced the common entrance exanimation with a transition examination. During the meeting, the representative of KERD in Kano explained that the new examination was introduced in an attempt to ensure quality and standard. This must have sounded contentious to the NERDC team but they let it go. The truth is that it is simply a practical issue of space and resources constraints. The policy assumes an equal absorption capacity for both primary and junior secondary segments of the education ladder, which is not the case in many states. There are far fewer spaces at the junior secondary schools than at primary level. This is consistent with our pyramidal education progression chart. The states as stakeholders were not brought in the discussion to prepare adequately for the commencement of the new policy.

As a consequence some pupils will not get admission into junior secondary school this year and for many years to come. What should happen to them? The Kano representative made some vague allusion to some form of compensation that is nowhere in the policy. But supposing these children/their parents go to court and demand for justice that the national policy on education has guaranteed them/their children uninterrupted nine years of basic education, which some state governments are denying them through some transition examinations. How are the state governments to respond? The booklet has not answered this.

I had my question answered in spite of the fact that the moderator insisted I repeat the question the second time following demand by the participants that the question was evaded by the panelists who, after tossing the question around, claimed they had forgotten what it was about. I had expressed concern about the concurrent commencement of the new curriculum at both primary and junior secondary levels. I had noted that during the presentation and in the booklet itself, there was much emphasis about the link between the lower and higher levels of the basic education segment, with the lower providing the foundation for the higher. It was this link that was missing in the curriculum that is now being phased out. The new curriculum is also to address some skills and competences that the pupils need but could not be provided by the old curricula. This informed the introduction of new subjects such as computer studies, English studies, etc. These new subjects, some of which are compulsory at both the middle and upper level of the education, mean that the link between the upper and the middle is that the middle would lay the foundation for the upper level.

The problem with the simultaneous implementation of the new curriculum is that the junior secondary schools students who are currently being taught using the new curriculum were products of the old curriculum and therefore did not have the opportunity for the foundation classes of many of the new subjects they are being taught. For example, the junior secondary school curriculum assumes that a JSS student had studied computer studies for at least three years during the primary school and therefore the materials they would be introduced to at this level is a build up on the previous knowledge. But the reality is that many of the JSS 1 students have not studied this and many other subjects. So what are they to be taught? The actual content of their current level as provided in the new curriculum or from the very beginning that is providing the content of primary 4 or even earlier as the case may be? If it is the former, then the whole logic of the new curriculum has been turned upside down and its fine points ignored. If it is the latter, when will they be taught the materials for their current class?

There seems to be two possible solutions to these: increase the hours for these new subjects at the junior secondary school if we must do a concurrent implementation, or better commence implementation with primary one and then gradually phase out the old curriculum in nine years' time at the last class of the junior secondary school. These are matters that ought to be fully discussed and not be glossed over by a mere reference to some vague implementation gap as the officials did that day.

I think the stakeholders meetings, late as they were, is an opportunity for all to contribute towards reducing the many confusion, implementation gaps and misunderstanding that characterized the new basic education curriculum and its implementation.