The 2009 Educational Reforms in Nigeria: An Evaluation of the Policy on Access and Gender Parity

Abstract

In spite of the pivotal role of education to the advancement of mankind, the opportunities for enrolment in tertiary education in Nigeria were grossly inadequate for the needs of the country. Access to higher education, gender parity and the lack of capacity of the system to absorb the numbers of candidates seeking admission to higher educational institutions among others, continue to pose serious problems to the attainments of education sector goals in the country. This paper is aimed at evaluating the 2009 educational reforms benchmarks towards the development of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. The paper relied on secondary source of data. Official publication of Federal Ministry of Education, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) country reports, Roadmap for Education (2009) and JAMB Annual Reports/publications were used for descriptive and analytical purposes. The paper established that for the period under review 2011-2016, the 20% annual increase in admission benchmark though reasonably achieved with 62% positive variance, the gap between those admitted and candidates left out continue to grow, thus out of the 7.5 million candidates that applied for placements into Nigerian tertiary institutions, only about 1.7 million candidates were admitted (21.9%) leaving out 78% or 5.9 million from opportunities for tertiary education and the reform benchmark on gender equity (55%/45% male-female) was yet to be achieved. The paper recommends for the expansion of the activities of National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), Open and Distance Learning (ODL) and National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) with improved facilities, advancement of Technical and Vocational Education (TVE) programmes, and increase of carrying capacity of tertiary institutions without compromising standards. Also that female admission ratio into tertiary institutions should be improved with continuous gender focused education programmes.

Keywords: Education, Access to education, Gender parity, Quality education

DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/10-11-02

Publication date: November 30^th 2020