So I was travelling across a state and saw a secondary school signpost indicating that a flat in an adjacent bungalow is a full fledged government approved school and I was like whoa? who approved that?
Although education is a shared responsiblity amongst stakeholders, but ultimately the government is responsible for providing the right climate that encourages quality teaching and learning, setting standards and refusing to accept less.
The twin roles of the government are to provide free education and to protect the right to education by maintaining its standards.
Beyond holding government accountable for provision of free education to students, we must also hold them accountable for private school standards.
So the question is how do we hold them accountable?
One school of thought proposed using election as a tool for attaining education goals, but this hasn’t proven successful in previous years, especially for governments that renege on their promises.
Social movement also may have impact on government accountability. However, it is safe to say that Nigeria doesn’t lie on the positive side of this statistic having had our fair share of strikes and protests that have yielded little returns. One reason for this is the poor impact education has had on innovation in the country but on second thought, it’s hard to see improvements in a sector you don’t invest in. You shouldn’t want to reap where you haven’t sown, and governments even shy away from the enormity of the problem not knowing where to begin.
So yes, strikes and social movements have not yielded the results we expect, but there is one that has the potential to but is grossly underused to force government accountabilty in education… the media. This channel is so strong, it can shut down a whole country, and with this same potential, it can put the government in check where education policies are concerned.
The media has huge potential to raise the visibility of education issues, put pressure on education actors to meet their responsibilities. How you say? By exposing evidence and directing focus, they can set the agenda for the public and policy-makers.
In the United States for example, more press coverage of politics resulted in better informed citizens, and a stronger civil influence on policy. Yet to achieve these, the media need to be independent, competent, reflective, democratic and accountable – qualities too often lacking, resulting in public distrust.
So yes, while one of this may bring little returns, the three forces when combined create a formidable accountability process that would keep government on its toes.
'Layinka Adebayo 