By Oluseye Ojo
Professor Olayinka Omigbodun, first female Professor of Psychiatry in Nigeria and the immediate past Provost, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, is a mental health professional and psychiatrist, with specialisation in children and youth. In this interview with Saturday Sun, she x-rayed and compared educational systems in Nigeria, United States, United Kingdom and Ghana. She also shared personal experiences she had with her children, who went to schools in Nigeria, United States and United Kingdom.
The Federal Government of Nigeria has come up with an educational policy of 18 years benchmark for university admission as well as writing secondary school terminal examinations. Although the government has denied the latter aspect, what is your take on the development?
I have never been an advocate of drive-through education. Over the years, I had noticed that this is something that is particularly common here in Nigeria, or maybe I should say in the South-West Nigeria where I have lived and worked for most of my adult life. I don’t know if it is just among the people that I relate with, but I had noticed that from my observations, parents want their children to finish school as early as possible, even when the children are not even academically exceptional.
I had noticed that parents are very anxious to get their children into secondary school as early as possible. I don’t know if it is just an anxiety to ensure they finish school early or if it is to be able to brag about this. I have been with parents who will say that their child entered secondary school at eight or nine years, or that their child, finished secondary school at age 13 or 14, and so on. I have also seen parents pushing their children into university at 14 when the child is just above average academically and not a genius.
As a child and adolescent mental health professional, and as a parent, I think that pushing a child into secondary school or university at a very early age can be quite damaging and harmful to the child, even if a child can cope academically. I have seen some sad cases. Many times, the parents also arrange a lot of extra coaching from lesson teachers and that is another trend that I have noticed.
The child has had a full day at school and from there they move into after school lessons until late in the evening to the extent that the child is not developing other areas and skills that are also important for the journey of life.
Apart from academics, there are many other areas that help a child to develop and mature and to be more intelligent, like music. Learning how to play the piano not only helps overall maturity but also encourages discipline, and stimulates the brain, thereby encouraging brain health, which is so essential for the journey of life. Brain health, according to the World Health Organisation, is the state of brain functioning across cognitive, sensory, social-emotional, behavioural and motor domains which allow a person to realise full potential over the life course. Learning to sing and play the drums, learning to draw and paint, sports and games, reading story books and not just academic books all encourage brain health, help to develop academic, emotional, social intelligence which are all important and not just academic performance. These will also help young people discover their talents of music, sports, and art.
Studies reveal that there is a direct relationship in performance at university level and the number of story books that a child read, particularly in early childhood.
I had noticed that many times, parents just want to push their children through school as fast as possible, and I have never been an advocate of that. I have always counselled against and spoken against it.
I remember clearly many years ago, I knew somebody whose child, by age eight, had entered secondary school and the parents brought the child to me professionally because they were worried. They told me that whenever the child came back from school, the child would go and sit in the sand in front of the house and play. They said the child was in secondary school and should not be playing with sand. Then, I said, “why won’t the child come home and play with sand, when you have pushed the child into secondary school at age eight? The child was obviously under too much stress and so would go into a regressed state on getting home to cope. A child may be able to cope with the Mathematics and English as well as other subjects, but the child is emotionally and socially not mature for that level.
Personally, I have always tried to ensure that my own biological children were well mature emotionally and socially before moving to the next step. I have never ever tried to push them in that regard. As we have moved around and travelled, my mind has been further opened to the importance of guidelines and policy on education.
What are the personal interesting experiences that you have had in the educational systems in Nigeria and in other parts of the world?
When my children were in their formative years, particularly in primary school, I lived on three continents as I moved from Nigeria to the United Kingdom, and to the United States of America at different points in time, as I had residency training in psychiatry, was a visiting scholar in psychiatry, a trainee therapist, studied to obtain a Masters in Public health and also accompanied my husband on his Rockefeller fellowship programme all at different points in time. As a Child and Adolescent Mental Health professional and as a mother, I always moved with my children despite the difficulties of balancing my studies with being their primary care giver. This also gave me the opportunity to appreciate the different educational systems around the world. It was a great privilege for which I am very grateful.
When I returned from the UK in the early 1990s, my son was around three years old then. We put him in a university staff school and after a few days, his teacher called me from the school to say that my child was very, very behind and when I asked why, they said he was unable to write from 1 to 20.
The teachers said the other children in the class were writing 1 to 20 and some from 1 to 100. He was just three years old then and I had brought him back from an excellent nursery school in the United Kingdom. His teachers in Nigeria said he had to stay back extra hours during break time in class, so he could catch up.
I thought to myself, I brought this boy from the United Kingdom. He was in an excellent nursery school in United Kingdom. Anyway, they added the extra lessons. Another observation I made was that the atmosphere was very different from what it was in the UK. The school in the United Kingdom had a beautiful environment with wonderful colours, beautiful places for children to play. They were doing finger painting and drawing and several interesting activities.
The school in Nigeria had no secured place for little children to play. The children would just roam all over the school. I remember visiting the school on his fourth birthday and for over one hour, we could not find him. We eventually found him in the section of the school for those in primary six. I would have expected that the children who were so young would have a secured fenced off location within the school for safety.
They didn’t really focus on the early kind of education that I felt would stimulate a child and make a child love to be in school. I also noticed that the teachers had canes to flog the children. I was worried and put off by this. That was many years ago, so I believe things would have changed by now.
Anyway, after a while, we were told he was now writing. At the end of the year, not only was he writing 1 to 20, he was doing addition, subtraction and even multiplication at this very young age of four. He was doing all sorts of complex mathematical things, and I doubt very much that he fully understood the fundamentals.
And then, we were privileged to go to the United States of America. So, when we arrived in the US, he was four years old. This is a boy who had spent one year in the reception class in a university staff school.
So, when we got to the U.S, we tried to get him into the public school system. They said he could not enter on the grounds that he was not five years old, and that he could not start kindergarten. We went up and down looking for a school to no avail, telling them he had done reception class in Nigeria, and he was even doing addition, subtraction and multiplication.
They said ‘Sorry. In the public educational system in Philadelphia, if a child has not turned five by the 31st of August, the child cannot start the public school system in the U.S.’ So, I was so distraught because he had already done one year of primary school in Nigeria, and I wondered what we would do with him. There were pre-schools but they were quite expensive.
Mercifully, we were eventually able to find and get him into a Catholic school. The Catholic school said their cut-off for starting kindergarten was 31st of December that year. The public school was 31st of August. So, that was how we were able to get him into kindergarten. But when he started kindergarten, they started teaching him A,B,C right from the beginning. They started teaching him 1,2,3 numbers.
But the method of teaching was different because they were teaching him to be able to understand, which was quite different from what was obtainable in Nigeria, where he was just learning to cram without understanding. It was rote learning, whereas in the U.S where he was starting from the scratch it was a problem-solving approach. He started learning how to write 1,2,3 and A,B,C and so on, so that he could have a solid foundation. Indeed, I noticed this excellent foundation, including beautiful handwriting.
If you look at that; a child would start kindergarten in the U.S at age five. Kindergarten is one year. Then, they would move step-by-step from Grade One to Grade 12. They have middle school and high school.
By the time the children finished high school, they are on average 18 years old because they start kindergarten at five.
The age 18 is when they are enter into university and not writing the final exams of secondary school. Kindergarten starts at five and by the time they finish kindergarten, they are six. If you add six and 12 together, you will get 18. This is the age they enter university. That is how their system has been, and they are constantly researching into this.
What was your experience in the United Kingdom?
So, like I said earlier, I moved around a lot into 90s. From 1990 to 1992, I was a resident doctor in the United Kingdom, from 1992 to 1993, I was a resident in UCH, Ibadan. From 1993 to 1997 I was a visiting scholar and trainee therapist in the USA and from 1997 to 1998, I was back in Nigeria and got appointed as a lecturer in Psychiatry at the University of Ibadan. From 1998 to 1999, I again travelled out to the UK on a British Chevening Scholarship and again travelled back to the UK in 2004 on MacArthur Foundation funded University of Ibadan staff development programme.
Based on the Nigerian drive-through education system, my son had passed the entrance examination into secondary school in Nigeria by the time he was nine years old. Fortunately, at this time, I was leaving for UK, and I was taking my children with me, so I went to the principal of the school, where my son gained entrance into in Nigeria and asked to defer his admission. In any case, he was young, and I was going to the UK. She said we should allow him to start. She advised that I should find somebody he could stay with. I was shocked as I expected the principal to advise that my son was young. I did not leave him behind. I took him along.
When we got to the UK, we could not get him into secondary school. Why? It was because to enter into secondary in the UK, you have to be 11 by 31st of August of that year. We could not even get him into Year 6. With his age, he was put in Year 5.
I have a nephew, who was born on the 8th of September. He could not enter secondary school until the following year, because if you are not 11 by 31st of August, you cannot enter public secondary school in the United Kingdom in that year.
I returned to Nigeria after a year, and I took him to the school where he had gained entrance to. The principal wanted to put him in JSS 2. I said no. He had been in primary school all this time. She asked if I wanted him to be a repeater. I insisted he would not skip any class. By this time, he was almost 11. He was able to go to school and he excelled exceedingly right through and gained admission on scholarship to one of the world’s top universities in the US. He was mature and could also do other things like excelling in music and leadership. Maturity always pays off.
I remember when I was coming back to Nigeria from the UK in 1999, my daughter was about four years old and I went to her school in the UK to beg them to teach her to write. She was going to the university nursery school in the University of Leeds where I was an MPH student. I appealed to her teachers to teach her to write. I told them, the last time I took my son to Nigeria, they said he was backward.
Then, the school authorities in the UK told me that based on research, they don’t teach children to write at that level. And she was four years old. I was told they don’t start real proper writing until they are five years old. At that age, they do finger-painting, colouring and all that. But they were not going to teach them A,B C to write until they start formal school at five.
They said they have done research, and the results showed the best time to teach them to write. They said when you teach them to write too early, their hand muscles are not well developed and you are pushing them. And all these things have consequences. They would have bad handwriting, and they don’t really understand. But their syllabus in the UK was that they could teach her reading, and phonetics at three.
So, my daughter at three years old, if you showed her the word balloon, she would identify and spell it for you in phonetics. She understood well and would read out words with their pronunciations but not writing as that was not in the curriculum for that age.
This is where I am coming from, in that in the UK, they are constantly doing own research and using this to improve their educational system. I must say that my daughter, by the time she came to Nigeria, we had to look for a school where they understood that writing 1 to 100 was not important at that age. This child went on to even have WAEC Award in Nigeria and gained admission to one of the world’s top universities.
The point I am trying to drive is that in those societies, they don’t push children, and they have set standards based on research. However, this is implemented in their public school system. I think the private schools are free to set their own guidelines based on information and I would recommend this approach.
Is it a disadvantage for a child to be much younger than other children in the same class?
It becomes a kind of disability as they will be different. The emotional cues, emotional and social skills they should develop will be affected even if they are performing at a high level academically.
I must say that when children are much younger than the others, in the class, it is a disadvantage. Let us say most of the girls in the class are 13 years and maybe they are in JSS 3. Then, a parent has pushed a child in at 8 years, and maybe she is now 10 years. What is going to happen? When all the girls are starting to develop secondary sexual characteristics – develop their breasts, start to menstruate, hips are coming out. This other girl that is very young would be an outlier. When they begin to talk about things they are experiencing because they are going through maturity and development, such as having crushes on boys which is a normal phase of development, this 10-year-old will be lost and be out of this. It becomes like a disability because the other children are physically, socially and emotionally different, even if that younger child is coping academically.
That is why in spaces like the US and the UK, when they do have exceptional children, they move ahead academically but with the relevant support systems in place. There are cases of children who finished their first degrees at age 14 in the US. These children will have their parents in school with them to help them emotionally and socially. It is the truth. Those children are on special tracks, and they have picked them up to be exceptional.
Another aspect that I just want to bring up is the aspect of research evidence to back up the policy being formulated by the government. What is the quality of education being offered in Nigeria? And what is the quality of education being offered in the US and the UK? Are we on the same level?
My children also told me that passing WAEC involves more of cramming and less of thinking or problem-solving approaches which encourage development, while foreign examinations like SAT and IGCSE are based on problem-solving approaches.
There are deep problems with the quality of education here in Nigeria and this needs drastic change based on research. I saw a study which revealed that one-third of school leavers in Nigeria are not literate, and another third are semi-literate. What do we do?
What would you recommend as a way forward?
At this point, there is need for massive education research that will be co-designed by government with stakeholders and I have several unanswered questions. On this policy, did the government carry stakeholders along? What research did the government base the policy on? Then, will the policy work in every part of Nigeria?
We are at the age of setting our priorities correctly. We need to prioritise constant research and improvement of the quality of primary and secondary education in the country.
To implement a policy like this, you need research evidence. You need pilot projects. They can pick some regions in the country and try the policy there to test its workability and impact. Then, there should be a transition period for the policy to be implemented and not a fire brigade approach. The transition period can be used to educate parents, teachers, policy makers, educationists, students on the importance of this new policy which had been built on evidence. Without this it just gives room to more corruption whereby parents would cut corners for their children to beat the age limit.
Also, the government needs to focus on the improvement of primary and secondary education systems and should implement evidence-based policies.
Some children have already finished their secondary school education at 15 and 16 years in Nigeria before this policy came out. Does this have any mental health implication for them?
I have discussed the age issue several times with a former student from Ghana, a medical doctor, psychiatrist and also a child and adolescent mental health professional as he was greatly concerned about our lack of proper age standards in Nigeria and his own observations about students who came from Nigeria to study in Ghana.
He described the Ghanaian school system as the pre-school period, which is from three years to five years. Formal education, starting with primary one at six years. According to him every child spends six years in primary school and very rarely a child who is exceptional will be allowed to skip a class. Junior high school is three years, and senior high school is also three years, such that students graduate from secondary school at 17 or 18 and enter university at 18 years. He said that school is compulsory in Ghana until the age of 18 years when you are legally an adult.
When he was in a certain university in Ghana, he noticed that the children who came from Nigeria were two years younger than the children of Ghana and that this had serious implications. While the Ghana-raised children entered university at 18 years, the Nigeria raised children were 16 years old and some were 15. His anecdotal observations were that on average with few exceptions, the Nigerian students appeared immature. They also had evidently higher rates of mental health problems such as conduct issues and drug use. He noted that they were the ones who would often skip class and he remembered an official saying that 40-50 per cent of disciplinary issues were from Nigerian students who also appeared to have a lot of money with them.
Everyone knew that there were lots of drug sales around the international hostel where they lived. They had higher repetitions and dropouts. This might not be as a result of age alone, but possibly the students were far away from home or had come from dysfunctional family settings in the first place. Whichever way, it was obvious that they were much younger and had behavioural and emotional concerns. He had studied medicine which was a six-year course and he noticed that by the time they were in fifth year, they appeared more settled which would have meant that the age maturity had set in.
Interestingly, I learnt also that in the University of Ibadan, research showed it was the younger students who were more likely to be lured into joining cults and who had more mental health concerns as was found in the past when cultism was a big problem.
This is another aspect that has not been provided for in the policy. Surely, it will have mental issues for the affected children that have completed their secondary education at the moment at age 15 or 16. Do they have to wait till they are 18 before getting admission? What would the children be doing at home? You know that an idle hand is the devil’s workshop.
This is why I mentioned a transition period to cater for the children that would be cut up in this policy change, and also including evidence-based policies as well. The government should control and be strict on the age a child can enter primary school and secondary school.
The issue of out-of-schoolchildren is also there. The government should also prioritise getting the out-of-school children back to school. Nigeria has the highest out of school children in the world.
In the UK, children enter secondary school at 11 and do GCSE at 16. They do A-Levels before 18. Also in the UK, the age limit is limited to public education.
Then, what about making provision for talented children in Nigeria like other developed climes in the new policy?
Certainly, this should be part of the policy. There are geniuses and we should cater for them.
One of the arguments put forward is that the year of graduation for children entering universities in Nigeria is unpredictable because of incessant strikes, unlike the situation in the UK and the U.S. What is your take on this?
When I just resumed as the Provost of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, for 18 months, there was strike. Of course, the strike would definitely prolong the stay of students on campus. This has made it difficult to predict when a child who entered university in Nigeria would graduate. Implementing a new evidence-based policy is best in a stable system. We still have numerous problems of instability, but I think carrying stakeholders along will help.
Personally, I have seen the benefit of having mature children move through school. They do much better, they are more stable emotionally and they are more likely to thrive in adult life. Running a child rapidly through school makes a child to lose their precious childhood which will never come back.
However, I want to say that we need to go back to the drawing board and prioritise evidence-based policies and co-produce, co-create, co-design and co-deliver with the major stakeholders.
