The Politics of School Census in Nigeria; The Role of Private Schools. Part 2

Greetings Steemians friends, how are you doing today I hope you are all good. Following the above topic I have earlier talked about here is the continuation part. I hope you all will stay with me by name @udoikotabasi from Nigeria.

This article may help School operators or school owners positively.

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2. Conceptual Definition

For clarity and better understanding of this article, with the definition of key concepts used in the article.

Politics: Politics refers to a set of activities associated with the governance of a country or region. It involves decision making in a group or other forms of power relations among individuals such as the distribution of power or status. In this context, it is an activity aimed at improving one’s status or increasing power within an organization. Politics could be used positively in the context of political solution, compromise and non-violence but the word often carry negative connotation. School: A School is an institution designed for attitude modification and teaching of pupils/students under the guidance of a teacher. It is a place or institution established for the purpose of teaching and learning (Musgrave,1978). The primary purpose of a School is to provide the society with the requisite manpower for development and to enhance the quality of life of the citizenry. Musgrave (1978) summarized the goals of School as an institution of learning to include: cognitive, moral or value, integrative and social mobilization.

Census or Population Census: The term census comes from the Latin word censere which means tax, assess or value. It refers to the entire process of gathering, organizing evaluating and disseminating demographic, geographical and social data of all individuals living in a nation or clearly defined region at a given time. Madara (2011) define it as a technique of gathering statistical information regarding a population, which is widely acknowledged as essential to democracy and progress. Population census is simply a regular headcount of people living in a specific area.

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School Census: the entire process of generating, processing, storing and publishing data/ information on all schools in a region – Local Government, State or Country. It highlights disaggregated enrolment, number of teachers, number of schools, infrastructure, among others, in an effort to make adequate and reliable data/information available for scientific policy formulation, planning and implementation of projects and programmes. Nigeria regularly embark on the conduct of Annual School Census, often supported by International Development Partners (IDPs), including the World Bank

Private Schools: These are Schools owned, funded and managed largely independently of the State. In other words, they are Schools not administered or funded by government. They maybe owned by individuals, charities, Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), Religious Organizations etc. The motivation of owning / operating a private school ranges from value, profit, income, influence, among others.

A typical Annual School Census Form requires information on the following:

School Characteristics disaggregated into Public and Private, Urban and Rural, Pre-primary, Primary, Junior Secondary and Senior Secondary School. Enrolment broken down into Pre-Primary, Primary, Junior and Senior Secondary School, male and female, by class, by age, by Local Government Area Pupils’ Attrition by Drop- out, Transfer-in, Transfer-out, Promotion etc No. of teachers: by sex, years of experience, qualification, local government, among others.

Physical Infrastructure: including Classrooms classified into good and bad. Utilities- Toilets, Water, Source of power classified into functional and non-functional. Furniture- Pupils and Teachers tables and chairs etc classified into good and bad Educational Materials: Textbooks etc.

These data/ information must be hornestly and carefully supplied in the questionnaire. Usually the information required for the completion of the Annual School Census are always available in the School. What the respondent need do is simply to retrieve the required information from the relevant School Records to complete the Questionnaire. Disaggregated date has to be broken down correctly to ensure that the totals for all categories of the same data set are equal as there are built-in checks to ensure data integrity.

It is pertinent to observe at this point that without properly kept school records, it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to complete the Annual School Census Questionnaire correctly.

I'll be back for part 3 and 4. Stay tuned.