NIGERIA-EDUCATION: Public Schools Forced to Canvass to Get Pupils

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

LAGOS, May 29 1997 (IPS) - The Land Rovers with public address systems that drove up and down Nigeria’s streets during municipal polls in March are now back, but this time they are not being used by politicians.

The people driving around the streets now are linked to local education committees. They have resorted to loudspeakers to encourage parents to send their children to state schools.

The message is simple: “Registration of pupils of school age into public primary schools has started. Take your children to the nearest public school for registration now. Give them sound education.”

The campaign has been prompted by a low turnout of children since registration started on May 5.

“Since we began the exercise … only 10 children have been registered in my school,” a female teacher whose school used to have at least 35 new pupils in each of its four first-year ‘arms’ (classes) told IPS. “We have been recording low turnouts in the last three years.”

This was confirmed by an official with the Mainland Local Government Education Committee here. He explained that his committee launched the recruitment drive because parents had been shunning public schools for private ones.

“In 1995, enrolment into public schools dropped sharply,” he said. “Some schools with three or four ‘arms’ registered between 30 and 40 children instead of 120 to 160 pupils”.

Toyin Ajulo, head teacher of a private school here, told IPS that parents had in fact been pulling their children out of public schools and sending them to private ones.

“Less than two months to the end of this session, six pupils were brought to our school by their parents from a public school,” he said. The children were tested and placed in grades much lower than those they had been in. “They can definitely not cope,” Ajulo said. “One cannot blame them though, they were hardly in class because of strikes by teachers in public schools.”

Ajulo, who once taught in public schools, explained that teachers in government-run institutions were demoralised by low or delayed salaries, whereas those in private schools were slightly better paid and received their wages on time.

In addition, he said, the infrastructure in most public schools is not all that good.

This was borne out by visits IPS paid to classrooms in government-run schools: many had broken windows and doors, and at the beginning of the year, some pupils have to take their own tables and chairs to class, as there is not enough furniture.

Incessant strikes and prolonged closure of schools have seen standards plummet throughout the nation’s education system, which receives very little funding from government.

As a result, more parents are stretching their small incomes to send their children to the private primary and secondary schools which have sprung up. Fees there are high but the learning environment and infrastructure are better than those of institutions run by the state.

Public primary and secondary schools in Lagos charge each pupil 100 naira (1.2 U.S. dollars) and 200 naira (2.4 dollars) per term respectively. In private schools, fees run from 20 to 250 dollars per term at the primary level, and 125 to 1,500 dollars at the secondary level.

“We pay high tuition in the hope that the private schools would have better facilities, more teachers and discipline because of the limited number of students per class,” Olu Oke, a journalist told IPS. “All these are non-existent in public schools.”

She explained that although some teachers in private schools are not fully qualified and even if children who go to such schools can become overly class conscious, more and more parents preferred to send their offspring there since there was a growing lack of confidence in public schools.