6-3-3-4 versus 18-year-olds, By Uddin Ifeanyi

You would be forgiven, following reports of the goings-on at a recent policy meeting organised by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) in Abuja, for thinking that a key problem with the country’s education sector is the age at which young people begin tertiary education. Along with other stakeholders in the sector, the Minister of Education, Tahir Mamman, attended the policy talkfest. And he took the opportunity to remind the country that 18 years is the age at which the federal government expects post-secondary educational institutions in the country to offer admissions to entry-level students. Despite pushback from stakeholders at the meeting, the truth is that the minister was simply restating policy.

In the end, on the back of the furore that followed the minister’s comments, the meeting agreed to allow JAMB admit 16-year-olds this year. But from next year, one supposes that any secondary school leaver below 18 years old would have to wait until they are age-qualified before they can gain admission into a Nigerian university, polytechnic, or college of education. The nuances of the conversation are as interesting as the arithmetic fails to add up. Whether 6-3-3-4 or the so-called “modified 9-3-4”, our current educational policy presupposes that a Nigerian child would have spent 12 years in primary and secondary schooling before s/he can be qualified to enter a university. In order to meet the 18-year-old hurdle, this means that no Nigerian child should start primary school before they turn six.

The conversation, then, hinges on two broad suppositions. The first is that before the age of six, a child is ill-prepared to handle the challenges of primary schooling. The second is that before the age of 18, a child is ill-prepared to handle the challenges of tertiary education. However, empirical evidence abounds that both of these presumptions are untrue. At the very least, it cannot be the case that it is only at the age when a child turns 18 — when they can vote and be voted for, enter legitimately into contractual relationships, go to jail, etc. — that they are qualified to go to school. The flip side of this argument is that a child under this age would struggle to deal with the rigours of tertiary education.

Arguably, the levels of agency required to attend school or go to prison cannot be the same if we are building a modern society. School requires that teachers stand in loco parentis to their wards in a way that the prison warden might not be required to. Thus, if our tertiary institutions are not conducive to children younger than 18, and our primary schools to children younger than 6, then the nature and content of the additional reforms to our education that we need are clearly spelled out: we must make our tertiary education ecosystem less like the Nigerian Correctional Services’ ecosystem (even as we struggle to make the latter a lot like the former in the production of socially-useful adults).

At some remove the current conversation around the appropriate age for admission into our tertiary educational institutions (at least, as framed by extant policy) misses several additional points. A casual commentator on the matter could be forgiven for thinking that the “menace” of children graduating from university before turning 22 explains graduate unemployment in Nigeria, why teachers turn to petty trading in our schools, why our curriculum might not be suitable for these digital times, etc. What thinking around this latter set of issues establishes is the need for root-and-branch reforms to how we dispense instruction in our schools, especially at the primary and secondary school levels. If the challenge of such reforms is to empower our young ones as early as possible with the knowledge, competencies, and skills that a modern society will require of its citizens, then we can only properly define the operative conditions for meeting this challenge in terms of the need to equalise opportunities. In other words, to give each child a leg up. To understand that in these circumstances, despite our best efforts, different children will proceed through the educational system at different speeds.

Is it okay to assume that the vast majority will do so in lockstep? The Bell Curve and its easy explanation for most such distributions has been proven to be problematic. But in this case, it invites us to consider the outlooks for two types of kids. Those whom, despite the educational system’s best intentions run the risk of being left behind. And those who, despite the system’s preference for uniformity will run ahead of the curriculum.

Uddin Ifeanyi, journalist manqué and retired civil servant, can be reached @IfeanyiUddin.