THE Federal Government has expressed concerns about the quality of secondary education in the country as reflected in learning outcomes and poor performance of some students, a lot of whom cannot read and write simple sentences according to a recent report.
Minister of Education, Professor Tahir Mamman, SAN, who stated this in Abuja, appealed to state governments, the private sector and other relevant stakeholders in education to support the implementation and establishment of standards in senior secondary schools.
Mamman spoke at the stakeholders’ meeting on validation of the two draft documents, National Minimum Standards for senior secondary education in Nigeria and the draft Strategic Plan for senior secondary education in Nigeria, 2024 – 2027.
He noted that senior secondary education Nigeria had been like an “orphan” without regulatory authority or intervention agency until the Federal Government, resuscitated the National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC) to regulate and provide intervention in senior secondary education in Nigeria.
“This became necessary considering the fact that other education sub-sectors such as the Basic Education, College of Education, Polytechnic and University Education have regulatory and intervention agencies which includes Universal Basic Educ Commission (UBEC), National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and the National Universities Commission (NUC) respectively.
“One of the key mandates of NSSEC as contained in the NSSEC Act 2023 is to prescribe and enforce Minimum Standards for senior secondary education in Nigeria. I am happy that the commission is focused on the delivery of the mandate by developing a draft National Minimum Standards which we are validating at this gathering,” he said.
The executive secretary, National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC), Dr Iyela Ajayi, said that the Federal Government has developed a four-year strategic plan for senior secondary education in Nigeria (2024 –2027) in line with the ongoing efforts to reposition secondary education in the country.
He assured strict enforcement of the National Minimum Standards for senior secondary education in Nigeria, saying severe sanction would be applied to both partial and non-implementation by schools.
He explained that the strategic plan, when approved, will provide a clear roadmap for the development of senior secondary education in Nigeria in the next four years.
He added that the preparation of the document had taken into consideration the road map for the education sector; prepared by the Federal Ministry of Education, the mandates of the commission and other policies and programmes pertaining to senior secondary education in Nigeria.
On the minimum standards, Ajayi noted that after the validation exercise, the document will be forwarded to the next meetings of the Joint Consultative Committee on Education (JCCE) and finally to the National Council on Education (NCE) for consideration and final approval later this year.
The draft document specifies the standards/benchmarks in various thematic areas in senior secondary education delivery, namely: teaching and learning; quality assurance; planning research and statistics, infrastructural facilities and equipment; special and support programmes and stakeholders’ responsibilities at the federal and state levels.
“When this is done, it will be mandatory for all the public and private senior secondary schools in Nigeria to implement the National Minimum Standards as it will define a benchmark for all aspects of senior secondary education in the country.
“The law has also given the commission the power to enforce the Minimum Standards. This we will do through a robust monitoring system.
“With time, benchmark performance would also be used as the basis for the ranking of senior secondary schools in Nigeria,” NSSEC boss said.
Ajayi recalled that before 2021, it was only the Senior Secondary Education sub-sector that operated without a regulatory and intervention agency and this had negative implications on the all-important and critical sub-sector of the Nigeria education system.
He added that it was in an attempt to reposition senior secondary education in Nigeria that in 2021, the Federal Government established the National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC) as a regulatory and intervention agency for all aspects of senior secondary education and Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Nigeria.
The bill establishing the commission was signed into law and gazetted in 2023. Among others, NSSEC has the mandate to prescribe and enforce minimum standards including intervention in the area of infrastructural development in senior secondary education in Nigeria.
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