The Quality of Nigeria’s Education and Economic Development
Chapter One
OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY
The objectives of the study are;
- To ascertain the relationship between teaches attitudes and education quality of students in Lagos State Senior Secondary Schools.
- To ascertain the relationship between learning material, parents attitude and students quality education in Lagos State senior Secondary school.
- To ascertain the relationship between learning material, parents attitude and students quality education in Lagos State senior Secondary school
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
Education in Nigeria: An Overview
The education sector in Nigeria has passed through two phases of development. There is the first phase of rapid expansion in the growth of the sector. This phase may be broadly located within the period 1950 – 1980. There is the second phase of rapid decline in the sector in terms of growth. This phase falls within the period 1981 – 2009. In the early 1950s when representative governance took its roots in Nigeria, the three regional governments had control of the educational development in their respective regions. This first phase in educational development in Nigeria effectively marked the beginning of rapid expansion in terms of access. For example the number of pupils in primary schools was 626,000 in 1954, the figure rose to 2,912,619 in 1960. Similarly the number of post primary school rose from 161 in 1955 to 912 in 1960. The student population in post primary schools rose from 9,908 in 1947 to 140,401 in 1960 (Aigbokhan 2005). The surge in access to schools was due largely to the policies and programmes of governments that built primary and post primary schools and also provided grant – in- aid to missionary schools. We must note here that the missionary churches dominated the provision of schools before the government take over of primary and post primary schools in the early 1970s. It must be noted also that at this initial phase of educational development no effort was made to select school curricula that would meet the long-run developmental needs of the Nigeria society. Rather emphasis was placed on numeracy and general intellectual capacity while technical and practical skills were neglected. The university college Ibadan which was the only university in Nigeria before 1960 had no facilities of engineering, law and technology. Access to tertiary education was more than doubled with the establishment of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (1960), university of Lagos (1962), University of Ife, Ile – Ife (1961), Ahmadu Bello university, Zaria (1962), University of Benin, Benin City (1970). These universities were established and funded by the post independence regional governments. In 1975, the federal government took over the regional universities and also extended grants – in – aid to state owned polytechnics. More universities and colleges of technology (polytechnics) were established between 1975 and 1980. Awopegba and Adedeji (2000) noted that in establishing the new educational institutions, sound investment criteria were not followed; instead the need to have regional balance, ethnicity, nepotism and opportunity for personal gains were the determining factor. One significant government policy to ensure unimpeded access to primary education was the introduction of the universal primary education (UPE) programme. This policy made primary education free to all Nigerian children. The second phase of the educational development in Nigeria was a period characterised by a decline in educational inputs leading to deterioration of educational fixed assets, inadequate funding and declining standards. Aighokhan et al (2005) noted that the period 1978 – 1999 was a crisis period in the education sector in Nigeria and the root cause of the crises was inadequate funding. Table 1 below presents the declining trend in real resource allocation to education from 1990 – 2003. Several reasons have been advanced for the low and unstable trend in the allocation of resources to the education sector. First, the dwindled oil revenues due to a fall in oil prices in the early 1980s lowered federal government budgetary allocations and education sector was the first to get the knock. Second the IMF/World Bank inspired structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) that was adopted as a development policy beginning from 1986 engendered cuts in fiscal spending including education expenditure. Third, the debt overhang of the 1980s and 1990s constrained the amount of resources available for the other sectors of the economy including the education sector. Fourth, it has also been suggested that the long military rule in Nigeria favoured the defence sector to the neglect of the education sector in terms of resource allocation. Fifth, widespread corruption in the management of educational institutions by political and school administrators has contributed to the underfunding of the education sector in the past three decades. These factors have led to gross underfunding of the schools in the phase of increased enrolment, leading to what was described in the National Economic Empowerment and Development Strategy (NEEDS).
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research design
The researcher used descriptive research survey design in building up this project work the choice of this research design was considered appropriate because of its advantages of identifying attributes of a large population from a group of individuals. The design was suitable for the study as the study sought to the quality of Nigeria education and economic development
Sources of data collection
Data were collected from two main sources namely:
(i)Primary source and
(ii)Secondary source
Primary source:
These are materials of statistical investigation which were collected by the research for a particular purpose. They can be obtained through a survey, observation questionnaire or as experiment; the researcher has adopted the questionnaire method for this study.
Secondary source:
These are data from textbook Journal handset etc. they arise as byproducts of the same other purposes. Example administration, various other unpublished works and write ups were also used.
Population of the study
Population of a study is a group of persons or aggregate items, things the researcher is interested in getting information on the quality of Nigeria education and economic development. 200 staff of ministry of education, Lagos state was selected randomly by the researcher as the population of the study.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION ANALYSIS INTERPRETATION OF DATA
Introduction
Efforts will be made at this stage to present, analyze and interpret the data collected during the field survey. This presentation will be based on the responses from the completed questionnaires. The result of this exercise will be summarized in tabular forms for easy references and analysis. It will also show answers to questions relating to the research questions for this research study. The researcher employed simple percentage in the analysis.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
It is important to ascertain that the objective of this study was the quality of Nigeria education and economic development. In the preceding chapter, the relevant data collected for this study were presented, critically analyzed and appropriate interpretation given. In this chapter, certain recommendations made which in the opinion of the researcher will be of benefits in addressing the challenges of the quality of Nigeria education and economic development
Summary
This study was on the quality of Nigeria education and economic development. Three objectives were raised which included: To ascertain the relationship between teaches attitudes and education quality of students in Lagos State Senior Secondary Schools, to ascertain the relationship between learning material, parents attitude and students quality education in Lagos State senior Secondary school and to ascertain the relationship between learning material, parents attitude and students quality education in Lagos State senior Secondary school. In line with these objectives, two research hypotheses were formulated and two null hypotheses were posited. The total population for the study is 200 staffs of ministry of education, Lagos state. The researcher used questionnaires as the instrument for the data collection. Descriptive Survey research design was adopted for this study. A total of 133 respondents made directors, administrators, senior staffs and junior staffs were used for the study. The data collected were presented in tables and analyzed using simple percentages and frequencies
Conclusion
Indeed, education performs specific roles on how to cure economic acceleration because, it will be enlighten the people the repercussion of the economic recession in any country. For instance, Nigeria has Economic Recession presently. However, only education can provide the solutions to the problems. Moreover, it will provide the experts who can manage available resources and how to punish anyone who is guilt of money laundering which many public office- holders have committed during former president Good lucky Jonathan administration Nigeria.
Recommendation
Nigeria government should provide quality education to citizens and with learning materials
References
- Adesola .A. (2011) The contributions of education on Economic development unpublished paper university of Ibadan
- Emile .D (1918) ; in sociological review X, 1, 1918 p. 54 and victor journal of sociology.
- Koo. R (2009). The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics-Lessons from Japan’s Great Recession. John Wiley & Sons (Asia) Pte. Ltd.
- Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary. Retrieved 19 November 2008.
- Rampell. C (11 January 2011). “More Workers Complain of Bias on the Job, a Trend Linked to Widespread Layoffs”. The New York Times Shiskin, Julius (1 December 2004). “The Changing Business Cycle”. New York Times. p. 222.
- Vaitilingam. R (2009). “Recession Britain: New ESRC report on the impact of recession on people’s jobs, businesses and daily lives”. Economic and Social Research Council. Retrieved 22 January 2010.t
- Dike, Victor (2009). The State of Education in Nigeria and the Health of the Nation. African Economic Analysis. Ahmadu Bello University Press Zaria Nigeria.
- Dorian, S.K. (1997). Education and Health in an Effective – Labour Empirical Growth Model. The Economic Record. Vol.73: pp.314 – 328.
- Engle, R. And Granger, C.W.J. (1987). Co-integration and error correction: Representation, estimation and testing. Econometrica. Vol. 55(2). Pp.251-276.
- Geol, S.C. (1974), “ Education and Economic Growth in India. Comparative Education Vol.10(2): pp.147 – 158.
- Gylfason, T. And Zoeya, G. (2003), Education, Social Equality and Economic Growth: A view of the Landscape Economic Studies Vol.49: pp.557 – 579.
- Granger, C.W.J. (1969). Investigating the causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods. Econometrica. Vol.37(3) pp.424-438.
