By Martin Paul
Abuja
Former Minister of Education, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, has called for an overhauling of the education system to avoid a total collapse, saying the decadence was becoming unbearable.
She stated in Abuja at the 2016 Nigerian Education Innovation Summit with the theme: “Scaling up Education Interventions in Nigeria: A call to action” organised by the Education Partnership Centre.
Ezekwesili said the need to revamp the sector has become imperative, stressing:
“The fact that access to education eludes tens of millions of our children, the fact that the quality and the relevance of the education they get does not match with the needs of the society, therefore, there is a mismatch between their own time in education and the value that is place on that time that should be demanding for their skills, knowledge and competences, that show you whether it is access, value of education, or we have systemic failure and we must overhaul.
“Systems are very important; when you have system, then you have a higher probability of good outcomes. If your systems are dysfunctional then you would need to overhaul them, because they can’t give you any good outcome. When we talk about education, you have to look at it as a system that has inputs, outputs, outcome and your measurement of the impact that the outcome really stand for, when you do that, you will realise that we have been in serious trouble since the time that I was even minister of education.”
She added further:
“Education left in the hands of policy makers is problematic. If we look at education as being the exclusive preserve of the policy makers, they would be so isolated in their place of authority and they would determine what the market and society need and would completely miss it. It is important that we encourage an inclusive approach in thinking about education.”
In her remarks, the Managing Director, The Education Partnership Centre, Dr. Modupe Adefeso-Olateju, called on stakeholders in education to ensure that every child in Nigeria benefits from successfully tested education Interventions by focusing on efforts to scale up their impacts.
Adefeso-Olateju added that despite efforts to improve the educational system in Nigeria, learning outcomes have shown little progress for the country as a whole.
