WAEC and the rest of us

Pateh Bah
WAEC Registrar

West African Examinations Council have announced the release of the time table for senior secondary schools examination. This is a welcome development.

For the students it has been a harrowing experience. For parents it is a big relief. For public school teachers, it is a call to serve. For private school teachers, it is a ray of hope.

Hope for pay. It has been harrowing an experience for them. It is sad indeed that our children's education is now in jeopardy. We attended public schools and in our time attending private secondary schools was for those unable to gain admission into public secondary schools through the National Common Entrance or Entrance Examinations into State owned secondary schools. The best from public secondary schools then wrote matriculation examinations to Federal Universities. The rest went to polytechnics or went to the US or India where education was believed to be less competitive.

Today, the glory of education is deserting public schools. First to bow was primary school,  followed by secondary schools and now Universities are under attack. 

The truth is that quality education is expensive and the few private schools that come near public schools in terms of infrastructure are really expensive others just manage what they have. The attraction of the private schools is that they are goal oriented where the public schools are just there without adequate care.

Truth be told, state universities can hardly compete with private Universities. Soon Federal Universities will follow suit.

Today schooling in the US is a dream, where Nigerians find schooling in Ghana attractive.

I find it interesting that just like Nigerians never looked forward then to travelling abroad for studies, footballers too were not keen on going abroad to play.

Those were the days of a strong Naira and not what it is today. 

How do you explain that the US then as now was more developed than Nigeria yet we looked down on their education the same way we looked down on Indian degrees in spite of their prowess in Science and Medicine. 

Similarly, the way we look down on graduates of polytechnics is sad. In the end what matters is not where you studied but what you make of what you studied.

The idea has been suggested that primary and secondary education in Nigeria, be made free and University education be paid for. This makes sense but when this can happen and if it can happen is the question?

For now all effort should be geared towards making the West African Examinations Council, Examinations 2020 a success for it is a window to the world for our young adults that we have really denied the joy we had in secondary school.