free school that sustains itself? Here’s how you can start one, tomorrow!
Salma is a hardworking girl who has just finished
secondary school. She sat two exit examinations
(NECO and WAEC). However, when the results
came out, her failure was a touch excessive – she
flunked all the papers.
Now she has become a statistic. She numbers
among 91.5 percent of students from her state
who failed the West African Examinations Council
exams that year. This means that she’s not going
to a university or a polytechnic or a college of
education. Like many girls who share her
misfortune, she has no future. She could only
hope for a good husband to knock on her door –
however, even those are in short supply.
Except that Salma is different or to put it
precisely, the school she attended sits on a
different model. Facilitated by the course
contents and her school, Salma started doing
business when she was in school. She is business
savvy too. Out of many businesses the school
operated for the students, Salma particularly
liked the dried fruit business. It’s easy; market
is available and has very little investment – of US
$130.
Want to start a free school? Want the school to
run itself even though it’s free? Teach a Man to
Fish, a nonprofit based in the UK has an answer.
Read on.
The problem
Our children are getting so little out of primary
and secondary education and the government has
so little money to do anything meaningful,
pushing many of us who are concerned to search
for alternatives. The result being that, we may
have to rethink the entire education model in
Nigeria. So far, what’s clear is that using WAEC,
NECO, JAMB, etc; as the ultimate goals of
successful secondary education to measure the
placement of students into tertiary institutions
is no longer sustainable, nor desirable.
In one of my columns of April 2013, ‘Becoming
algebra ninjas: Why Arewa may not fail ‘O’ level
math again,” I shared some depressing statistics:
“Only 20 percent passed the November/December
2010 West African Senior School Certificate
Examination (WASSCE). That is, only 20.04
percent of the candidates obtained credit in
English language, Mathematics and at least three
other subjects. We’ve been recording a consistent
pattern of mass failure in WASSCE for at least
five years. In 2008, only 23.54 percent of
candidates who sat the same examination passed.
In 2009, it was 21.96 percent. The May/June
version of the same examination is not better by
much. In 2012, the head of WAEC in Nigeria, Mr.
Uwadiae, announced that 38.81 percent out of
the 1.67 million candidates who sat for the
examination scored credits in at least five
subjects, including English language and
Mathematics; an increase of about eight percent
from 2011.
“When it was reported in the news that only 17
out of the 18,000 secondary school students who
sat for WASSCE and NECO in Gombe State passed,
many thought the 17 was a typographical error,”
Uwadiae stated.
“Obviously it wasn’t, because other states in
Nigeria share similar disturbing statistics and
the governments don’t seem to know exactly how
to remedy the problem. Last year, out of
frustration, the Kwara State government slashed
its grant for the payment of the National
Examination Council (NECO) senior secondary
examination from N80 to N13 million; this,
according to the commissioner for education and
human capital development, Raji Mohammed, was
on account of the mass failure of Kwara State
students in the final year mock examinations –
of the 33,000 students who were to benefit from
the grant, only 3,100 passed the mock
examination set by the state government,” he
elaborated.
What to do?
Teach a Man to Fish came as an answer to
unsustainability of schools in developing
countries. But we could stretch its model as an
answer to unemployability of our secondary school
graduates; in doing this, we also have the
opportunity of giving confidence to our students
that there is life after failing WASSCE.
How can a school be self-sufficient?
“The obvious answer would be to charge students
fees; yet there is plenty of evid ence to suggest
that this serves to exclude those from poorer
backgrounds,” Teach a Man to Fish writes in its
brochure. “So what’s the alternative? A model
that builds on the work already carried out in
vocational schools. What are needed are schools
that focus on ensuring their own financial
sustainability, and in doing so increase the
capacity of the education system – extending the
benefits of an education to an ever greater
number of students.”
The organisation pushes for a model where the
school opens a number of businesses for the
students while also integrating entrepreneurship
contents into the curriculum. The students learn
from the regular classes while also participating
in the practical aspects of entrepreneurship.
Most of the businesses require very low capital to
start and since most are agriculture-based
products, have ready market.
I see our schools running their vegetable
gardens, dried fruit, brick making and solar
stove businesses. Other simple businesses include
fruit juice production, community cold store and
so forth.
Beyond secondary schools
It appears Teach a Man to Fish focuses on
secondary schools, but Professor Mustapha
Zubairu and I are writing an academic conference
paper which seeks to extend the model to other
institutions. I’m reasonably confident any school
can adopt this model – from Islamiyya to driving
schools.
Where to go from here
The organisation has a rich website,
www.teachAmanToFish.co.uk, where you can
download all the documents you need – documents
such as how to organise your school to how to
write a business plan.
Beyond government
It’s hoped that diligent and patriotic individuals
would run with this idea and not wait for
government’s intervention. We already have
community-run extra classes which prepare
students for different examinations, some of
them already free. I know of an Abuja-based
patriot who travels to Yola in Adamawa State to
organise such programmes. Why can’t we adopt
this model to ensure the sustainability of such
arrangements and skill acquisition of the
students?
