The Need for policy shift; Why El-rufai also failed our children -By A. S. Gashinbaki

As Governor Ahmad Nasir El-rufai role out his school enrollment policy optimistically in Kaduna State, he – like those before him – failed to grasped the full nature of his blue print hurdles. Focusing on the poverty, cultural and socio-religious factors has always been the pitfalls that policymakers falls prey to whenever they are out to tackle our children low school enrollment rates. Their analogy is always aptly professed; “most children are out of school because their parents can’t afford to sponsor their education while others are swayed by cultural and socio-religious hostility towards western form of education.” But they never seem to really ask, if that is actually the case or if there is more? In reality, this analogy, “is nothing but a newspaper fairytale, almost indecorously at variance with facts” As used by professor Schumpeter on another occasion.

Three to four decades ago down to the colonial era, when western form of education is still held with contempt, their analogy would have held a considerable amount of water. But today, such contempt has significantly subsidized to the extent which is immaterial, as such pose no real threat to school enrollment rates.

Right from the pre-independence era towards to the end of the 20^th century, every government policy on education is tailored towards addressing the poverty, cultural and socio-religious aspects of the society. These policies are quite effective, for year after year, there is a sustained increase in the number of school children enrolled. From the northern frontiers down to the shores of the Atlantic in the south, every parent makes it their sacred duty to educate their children in this era. Whenever any adult saw a child roaming during school hours his first question to him is, “why are you not in school today?” The negative cultural and socio-religious attitudes towards western form of education has been defeated at last and every community embraced a new social value with unprecedented enormous regards to education.

In practice, three methods are employed by policymakers throughout the country to addressed the societal attitudes towards western education. These are: (a) The Force Method: – This mandated every parent to send their children to school or face penalty. These are usually enforced by the traditional rulers. (b) The persuasive or enlightenment Method: – This employed reasoning in a bid to remove the negative cultural and socio-religious stigma attached to western education by the society, and (c) The Incentive Method: – This is the most important of them all. This policy concentrated on raising the incentives associated with attaining western education against indulging in any other endeavour. The opportunity cost of engaging in other activities, say farming or trading becomes much higher than that of schooling.

Neither the force nor the persuasive methods are responsible for the draw back now witnessing in the educational sector. The real culprit for this setback rests on the incentive method.

Economists have made it clear that rational human beings pursue activities only to the extent which its marginal benefits exceed or is equal to its marginal costs. It has been maintained by all and sundry that the benefits of attaining a college certificate can be reap only in what Emmanuel Kant refers to the “phenomenal” world.

Once upon a time in this country, those who attended college have a guarantee that the benefits they stand to gain will by far exceeds their alternatives forgone. As such, more and more people forgone their other activities and concentrated instead in going to school, this corresponded to a typical behavior of any rational human being.

But today, the opportunity cost of going to college has dramatically risen to rival that of abstaining from – if not exceeds – it. If a person should commit an average of 16 years of his life in attending school and yet cannot be guaranteed of any benefits afterwards, common sense alone should tell you if anyone else would wish to do the same. (Success, they say leave clues, but so does failure).

Gentlemen, the marginal cost of sending children to school has risen relative to its substitutes, the masses have seen and felt it, and they have given a befitting reply to it – by switching to other activities with less opportunity cost. You can woo them with free meals, uniforms, and books or even tablets in the short run but you can never win them over in the long run.

The problem we now face can be and should be solve by pursuing policies that will increase the incentives associated with going school while at the same time reduces its cost at the long run, instead of giving out temporal aids to the vulnerable or pursuing enlightenment policies which has since achieved their aims. For as long as the people believes spending 16 years in school is most likely to end as bad investment, they would prefer to spend their entire lifetime in farms or trading, which promise them at least a fairly rate of returns.

Our university lecturers today, teach their students the laws governing the motion of planets and the sun and illustrates how the forces of gravity glue us to the earth; only to shamelessly call them aside and echoed softly in their ears on the eve of their graduation, saying; “your skills may never be useful, so be prepared to go and learn the laws governing demand and supply of commodities in the market in case.”

The low incentive for attaining college certificates, pose the real threats to our educational sector in this country, every other thing is peripheral. Instead of politicking around, we must go back to the radix (root) of this problem and proffers a lasting solution to it.