[lg policy] Nigeria: Our Commitment to Education Reforms Inspired NERDC's Transformation

Fri Feb 18 15:58:01 UTC 2011

Nigeria: Our Commitment to Education Reforms Inspired NERDC's
Transformation - Prof Obioma

The strong desire to ensure a successful implementation of the
education reform initiatives of the Federal Ministry of Education
inspired the strategic re_engineering process at the Nigerian
Educational Research and Development Council.  According to the
Executive Secretary of the parastatal, Professor Godswill Obioma, the
Council was on the brink of extinction when he came on board in March
2005 but had to quickly embark on strategic re_engineering and
repositioning process in order to key into the various reform
initiatives being rolled out by the Federal Government.

At a media briefing which held in Abuja last week, Prof Obioma
captured the state of the council he met "My discovery then was that
the council, by estimate, was operating as low as 30% of its statutory
mandates with respect to curriculum, book and language development as
well as educational research for public policy. Its institutional and
structural framework for effective operations were weak and out_dated.
Development partners and relevant public and private entities have
virtually deserted the council. Staff morale was very low. The
physical and other operational infrastructure at the headquarters and
provincial offices were dilapidated"

He continues: "The funding situation was also very poor. Funds for
personnel emoluments could not cover the payment of basic salaries and
statutory allowances and the overheads allocation was a little over
N300, 000 per month. There was no dedicated provision in the
appropriation for core statutory responsibilities and capital funding
was also low"

Explaining how his management responded to these challenges, the
Professor of Mathematics Education and Evaluation said that their
immediate response was to articulate a vision and mission to drive the
re_engineering efforts, adding that the Council's six academic
centres, his office and support departments were restructured while
its statutory mandates were realigned in consonance with the
restructured academic entities to eliminate role conflicts and
ambiguities.

The other aspect of the restructuring, according to the NERDC boss, is
that the council's statutory duties were then linked to the on_going
reforms. His words "You will recall that about 2005, the issue of
NEEDS had kicked off. And one critical aspect of NEEDS is the need to
use education to empower the people, to eradicate poverty and to
generate wealth. And we thought that we should situate the Council's
mandates around those extant policies that promote development and
reforms.

"And so one of the things we did was to look into the issue of
restructuring basic education curriculum (BEC) to meet the ideals of
basic education programme. We quickly restructured the BEC into a
9_year basic education paradigm and that was approved by the National
Council on Education in 2007 and is now being implemented nationwide
in primary and junior secondary schools"  Shedding more light on the
research and development activities of the agency, Obioma explained
that the Council has produced Teachers Handbook on the implementation
of the BEC, Teachers Guides, has adapted the 9_year BEC for special
needs learners with its Teachers Handbook as well as over 3000
indigenous sign languages for BEC already produced.

According to him, 9_year Basic Education Curriculum was followed by
the development of the new senior secondary education curriculum and
34 trade/entrepreneurship subjects for senior secondary education, the
implementation of which will both commence in September 2011,
disclosing that Teachers Handbook for the implementation of the
curriculum as well as Entrepreneurial Skill Acquisition curriculum for
out_ of_ school youths have been practiced.

Giving a scorecard of the Council's activities and achievements under
his leadership in the last six years, Prof. Obioma mentions the
carrying out of quarterly assessment of school books and Instructional
materials, revision of the national education policy, national book
policy, establishment of school readership clubs nationwide, revision
of new school books for the 9_year basic education curriculum and
teachers handbook for the selection and use of instructional materials
for BEC.

Among the long list of the council's achievements is the development
of language Map for Nigeria, National Language Policy, bilingual
dictionaries in Hausa, Igbo and Yoruba for basic education,
orthographies/meta languages in 34 Nigerian languages, the Journal of
Research And Development, school curricula for some of the Nigerian
languages as well as the inauguration of the annual policy dialogues
of the National Educational Services Network of Nigeria.

The NERDC boss also touched on public policy_ based research
activities carried out by the council. These include: predictive study
of the achievement in public examinations and university performance,
the impact of the reform process on the education sector, assessment
of the implementation of the 9_ year basic education curriculum, a
survey of the opportunities for inclusive education in Nigeria,
training of Education Resource Centres officials as well as the
commencement of NERDC annual national conferences.

Prof Obioma also talked about how he addressed the paucity of funds
that incapacitated the Council in discharging its statutory
responsibilities for years.

Hear him: "We initiated the process of fund improvement and succeeded
in scaling up overhead funds to N56m per annum from a paltry sum of
about N300, 000 per month. We also soured the initial sum of N100m
which was dedicated to the statutory academic activities of the
council and we also made a strategic case foe the continual
improvement of capital funding"

This was followed by the reactivation of NERDC's relationship with the
international development partners by informing them of the new vigour
of the Council, presenting to them its new vision and mission
statements. Through this method, says Obioma, UNICEF, World Bank and
the Millennium Development Goals office began to make funds available
to the council. Since then, according to him, there has been no going
back.

This improvement in funding led to improved staff welfare as back_log
of outstanding salaries and allowances were settled, staff education
and training was reinstated and the council commenced the sponsoring
of staff to local and international academic conferences.

The council also undertook study tour to relevant international
agencies and institutions, fostering international linkages with
African Association for Educational Assessment (AAEA), International
Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA) as well as the
international Bureau for Education (IBE) in Geneva.

There was also physical and infrastructural development in the
headquarters of the Council at Sheda as well as in the six zonal
offices.

But inspite of all these achievements, the Council, according to
Obioma, still contends with some challenges. These challenges include
the development, nurturing and sustenance of best practices, globally
competitive human resources capacity, improving the zonal offices
capacity, linking the headquarters and the zonal offices through
Wireless Area Network, sustaining the review and production of school
curricula and reactivating the initiative of training out of school
youths in functional trades and entrepreneurship skills at zonal and
state levels.

Other challenges, according to him, include the completion of the
physical infrastructure of the zonal offices at Minna, Abakaliki and
Calabar, the take off of the Junior Secondary component of the NERDC
National Model School and completion and equipping of its virtual
library. But these challenges are to be frontally confronted in order
to realize the Council's goal of becoming a regional centre of
excellence in educational research and development, he says.

http://allafrica.com/stories/201102170809.html

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