The Politics of School Census in Nigeria; The Role of Private Schools. Part 3, Final part

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

I believe this article may help School operators or school owners progress positively.

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1. Ensure availability of valid and reliable data on the educational system.

2. The resulting data gives a clear picture of the school system, exposing its strengths and weaknesses for targeted intervention.

3. Providing information needed for data- based planning, informed and evidence-based decision making.

4. Census data provides an objective basis for measuring the level of implementation of the school as well as government policies.

5. Attracting Donor funds for the development of the educational sector as government alone cannot shoulder all responsibilities of the educational sector.

6. Provide a basis for objective measurement and evaluation of the performance of the school system.

7. providing information to Stakeholders-School Sponsors/ Owners, Parents/ Guardians, Employers, Researchers and the General public.

8. Data generated create a permanent/ life-long record for the School and other interested parties.

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The conduct of a Credible School Census in Nigeria is hampered by a number of factors, including:

★ Political interference

★ Falsification of figures for perceived benefit

★ Inadequate census education

★ Ethnic sentiment

★ Use of census figure as a basis of distribution of resources and political power.

★ Mistrust of private education providers on the intension of government with regards to Census (erroneous perception of census as a basis of taxation and other punitive measures)

★ Religious competition

★ Enumerators’ dishonesty/ compromise

★ Untrained/ poorly trained / equipped enumerators

★Inadequate Recourses

★ General apathy of private school on Census

★ Non-utilization of the previous census data/information

★ Lack of inter- Agency collaboration and cooperation on the use of Census data.

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Private education providers play critical role in the nation’s educational development. Their contributions in terms of knowledge acquisition, literacy development, employment generation and general socio-economic development is enormous. Evidence abound to prove that Private Schools perform better than Public Schools in a good number of indicators including: Enrolment, Lesson Delivery (teaching and class attendance), Achievement of learning outcome, Performance in examinations, Unit cost of education delivery, Local penetration, among others. Given the prime place of the private schools in education, adequate data/information on their conditions and operations must be gathered and documented in the Annual School Census as complete picture of the educational system cannot be painted without them. Private schools should therefore be persuaded and encouraged not only to fully participate in the Annual Schools Census but also to co-operate and partner government in the development of the nation’s educational sector. They should, as a matter of fact, be carried along right from the planning stage, through execution to monitoring of all government educational policies, projects and programmes, including the Annual Schools Census (ASC).

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The issue of Population Census in Nigeria had, since inception in 1866, been a highly contentions and controversial one. Nigeria has not been able to come up with adequate and acceptable demographic data since the colonial era. Every attempt at had been marred by controversy. The background to this problem is the peoples’ attitude towards the population question in terms of its absolute size and its effect on States and Regions. Given its potential to influence State, Ethnic and geopolitical relations, balance of power and share of the national resources, different regions haggle to manipulate census figures to their advantage each time attempt is made to conduct a census. Unfortunately, this ugly trend has transcended the conduct of the Annual Schools Census both are the state and national levels. At the national level, every state haggles to outdo the other while at the state level, schools, communities and Local Government Areas strive to take advantage of others. This problem is aggravated by the introduction of School’ Subvention based on school enrolment. At the national level, the problem is exacerbated by the use of school enrolment as one of the items of revenue allocation.
School Census suffers general apathy from private school operators. Consequently, schools that would have been captured / tracked have been uncooperative or out- rightly hostile to enumerators. Understandably, this sentiment stems from the long period of neglect of private schools by successive governments with respect to the distribution of educational materials and other incentives and the misunderstanding that census information is for taxation and punishment of unregistered and substandard schools. Without holding brief for government, I wish to state that:

★ It is not entirely true that there is no government incentive to private schools in the Country. Though I cannot remember any State Government incentive to private schools in the State, the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) has some incentives for private schools. Please find out and avail yourself of this opportunity.

★ Private schools have not received the required attention from government because most of the Schools operate in obscurity. Most have refuse to be transparent on their operations; unwilling to make the necessary disclosures.

★ Let me dissuade you that school census is not punitive, not for taxation or sanction but to generate valid and reliable data for planning and evidence- based decision-making that will help in the overall development of the educational sectors. Please co-operate when next the exercise will be conducted. It is only by so doing that government will know you and have confidence in you for possible assistance.

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For better outing in Annual School Census in the future, this article recommend the following:

★ That Government should take accurate data generation seriously and make adequate budgetary provision for it.

★ That adequate and appropriate resources; manpower, equipment / facilities should be deployed for exercise

★ Engagement of honest and reliable enumerators and other personnel for the exercise

★ Enumerators should be made to view the exercise, not just as government engagement but as personal contribution to the promotion of the nation’s educational development

★ Government should ensure efficiency of the process and system deployed for the Exercise

★ Government should also make adequate provision of necessary materials, equipment and motivation for the project.

★ There should be proper monitoring and evaluation to prevent data manipulation and ensure overall efficiency

★ Enumerators should be made not to compromise the integrity of the process but to generate only valid and reliable data

★ Government both the state and federal levels should effectively partner private school operators to engender trust

This article examined the politics of school census in Nigeria, with special emphasis on the role of private education providers in the power play. The meaning, procedure, importance and challenges of conducting credible school census as well as the role of the private schools in the process were carefully analyzed. A review of population census in Nigeria reveals that as a result of its potential influence on states, regions and geopolitical relations, balance of power and share of the national cake, population census in Nigeria has remained a highly contentious issue, with each state manipulating census figures to her benefit. The paper further observed that this trend has unfortunately transcended the school census making the generation of credible data for informed and evident-based planning and decision making difficult. Noting the general apathy of private school operators to schools census, the study recommends effective partnership of private education operators to allege their fears and elicit their full participation and improvement of the integrity of the process by deploying credible enumerators, efficient equipment and technology. It is only by so doing that the nation can gather complete, adequate and reliable data to drive rapid development of the Educational Sector.

I hope my article will be useful to both private and public schools operators.