Anticipated Barriers to Open Schooling System in Nigeria

Abstract

In an attempt to develop plans for making Education for All a reality, four agencies of the United Nations brought together over 150 governments in 1990 to Jomtien, Thailand, and also in 2000 in Dakar, Senegal, with the aim of making education equally accessible to all. Nigeria is one of the countries that signed the Jomtien declaration in 1990, and one of those with the highest number of out-of-school children in the world with about 10.5 million out-of-school children in 2010. This figure represents 42% of its primary age population and 3.6 million more children out of school than ten years ago. Nigeria is now committed towards bridging the gap especially with the attempt towards establishing open schools, but considering the numerous problems confronting the existing public primary and secondary schools and other educational programmes, there are certain barriers that may hinder the successful implementation and smooth running of the proposed open schooling system. This paper examines the anticipated barriers that includes; corruption, lack of consistency in programmes, problem of electricity, lack of access to Internet, lack of fund, inadequate manpower and problem of recognition. For open schooling system to see the light of the day, some recommendations were suggested which, if taken into consideration will be useful to policy makers towards the successful launching and smooth running of the open schools and other laudable educational programmes in Nigeria.