Introduction to Curriculum in NIGERIA

INTRODUCTION
Nigerian educational system has gone through
various developments and changes viz-a-viz
curriculum issues. The dynamic nature of the
curriculum process lead to the history of
curriculum development for basic education in
Nigeria. Analysis of the Nigerian education
sector reveals the challenges of incoherence in
policy Formulation and implementation. The
selection and organization of curriculum
content, curriculum implementation and
evaluation, the development, distribution and
use of teaching materials, and the relevance of
the curriculum to the needs of society
Therefore, the need for transformation in
curriculum for all the educational levels
becomes necessary.
THE MISSIONARY CURRICULUM, 1842-1882
The history of curriculum development in
Nigeria was the arrival of the Christian
Missions towards the end of the first half of
the nineteenth century, followed closely by the
Establishment of missionary schools and the
teaching of the Four R's. From the time of
their arrival from September 1842, until 1882,
the Christian Missions alone controlled the
school curriculum in Nigeria. They alone
opened, maintained and controlled schools.
They alone formulated the objectives, content
and methods of teaching the subjects included
in the curriculum of those schools. Basically,
the schools provided instructions in the four
R's: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic and Religion
(Fajana, 1969). Apart from Badagry, Abeokuta
and Lagos, where the missionaries opened their
first set of primary schools, there were also
primary schools in Ijaiye, Ogbomosho, Ibadan
and later across the Niger in Calabar, opened
through the joint efforts of the Christian
missions and the local communities. The main
objectives of the missionaries in opening these
primary schools were to train teacher-
catechists, lay-readers and cooks, particularly
to give the new converts basic instructions in
the English Language so that they could be
more useful in the missionary work which was
the missionaries' primary assignment in
Nigeria. Apart from basic instructions in the
four R's, therefore, the new converts were
gradually initiated into British ways of life as
they lived with their pastor-teachers. Although
the missionaries intended to confine their
activities initially to the provision of primary
education, local adherents of the various
Christian denominations agitated for the
opening of secondary grammar schools in their
respective local environments. These local
demands led to the opening of the Church
Missionary Society (C. M. S.) Grammar School,
Lagos, in June 1859 and subsequently the
Methodist Boys' High School, the Methodist
Girls' High School and the Baptist Academy.
Although these grammar schools were opened
in response to local demands, the curriculum
was controlled by the missionaries. The
subjects offered included English Grammar and
Composition, History, Geography, Bookkeeping,
Euclid's Elements, Latin and Greek Grammar
and Plain Treastises on Natural Philosophy.
Hebrew and French were
taught from time to time, depending on the
availability of teachers Moral Philosophy,
Political Economy, Mythology and Antiquities,
Chemistry, Physiology, Geology and Botany
were also taught (Ajayi, 1963).
These subjects were selected from the list of
subjects being taught in British Grammar
Schools at that time (Adeyinka, 1983). Very
little consideration was given to the future
needs of the pupils, because this type of
curriculum was considered adequate for the
type of white-collar jobs that were normally
available for the products of the early
grammar schools. Thus, the British literary
tradition was strictly followed in the early
Nigerian grammar schools, so that training in
agriculture or preparation for self-employment
in other areas did not constitute an integral
part of the early curriculum.
THE EARLY CURRICULUM/I AND THE
IMPACT OF BRITISH EXAMINING BODIES,
1882 - 1925
The year 1882 was a landmark in the history of
education in Nigeria, a major trend in the
development of the curriculum, for it was
from that year that the government began to
show interest in the development of the school
curriculum when it passed an Education Act
which provided for a Board of Education to
control the development of education at all
levels in English speaking West African
Countries. However, it was not until 1887,
when the first Nigerian Education Act was
passed, that a separate Board of Education was
constituted for Nigeria. The Act provided for
'Assisted' and 'Non-Assisted' schools and
invested in the Nigerian Board of Education
the authority to control and direct the
development of education in the country. All
'Assisted Schools' were qualified to receive
government grants, worked out on the
principle of 'payment by results' and subject to
favorable inspection reports. The implication
of this for curriculum development in Nigeria
was that a majority of the schools, in an
attempt to attract government grants, began to
employ more qualified staff to teach most of
the subjects available in the school curriculum
of the time in order to record a higher
percentage of passes in those subjects.
Considerable emphasis was placed on the
teaching of English and Arithmetic, two of the
subjects required for employment in the civil
service.
Up to 1909, the only external examination
available to Nigerian Grammar-School
candidates remained that of the College of
Preceptors of London. The first recorded
success of Nigerian candidates in that
examination was in 1892, when Michael Cole
and Simon Pratt of the C. M. S. Grammar
School, Lagos, passed the examination with
First Class Certificate. In December 1910, one
year after the opening of the first Government
Secondary School (King's College, Lagos), the
University of Cambridge Local Examinations
Syndicate (U.-C. L. E.S.) created a centre for
its local examinations in Lagos. Thus, King's
College, Lagos, led other grammar schools in
Nigeria in presenting candidates for Cambridge
Local examinations. The fact that a colonial
centre was created in Lagos at that time was of
considerable significance in the history of
education in Nigeria. Later, other grammar
schools in the country soon followed the
example of King's College with the result that
in the years following 1910, growing numbers
of school candidates consistently entered for
the Cambridge Local Examinations. From the
year 1910 when Cambridge Local Examinations
were introduced into Nigeria, the Nigerian
Secondary Grammar-School curriculum was to
a large extent determined by the Cambridge
Local Examinations Syndicate, because these
schools prepared their pupils for subjects
normally examined by that body. occasionally
taught in some secondary grammar schools in
Nigeria. The curriculum of the primary school
included writing and Dictation, Arithmetic,
English, Grammar, English Composition,
Religious Knowledge, History and Geography.
Pupils were prepared for the Middle Four
Examination organized by the Department of
Education established in 1903. Most of the
grammar schools of the time had primary
departments. The teacher training institutions
also followed an academic curriculum, but
they combined this with pedagogical training.
The Hope Waddell Training Institution, Calabar
(opened in 1846), St. Andrew's College, Oyo
(opened in 1896) and Wesley College, Ibadan
(opened in 1905) provided instructions in the
basic Arts subjects, Elementary Science,
domestic duties and infant care and teacher
education in general. Each of these institutions
paid considerable attention to the teaching of
Physical Training and Christian Religious
Knowledge (Solaru, 1964), apparently to aid
the physical and moral development of the
students. While primary school pupils and
students in teacher training colleges were
locally examined at the end of their courses,
secondary school pupils were consistently
externally examined. Here lies the importance
of the University of Cambridge Local
Examinations Syndicate. However, the impact
of U. C. L. E. S. during this period was more
noticeable in the senior local examination,
which became the School Certificate in 1923.
This had a wide implication for the
development of the curriculum of the senior
classes of Nigerian Grammar Schools. Thus,
the introduction of a new subject at the Senior
Local (School Certificate) Examination
consistency attracted positive responses from
secondary grammar schools which immediately
included this in their schools' curricular. For
example, the introduction of Applied
Mathematics, Experimental Science, Botany,
Natural History of Animals, Needlework and
Hygiene between 1916 and 1920 led to the
inclusion of these subjects in the Nigerian
grammar school Curriculum during these
years. This was the situation in Nigeria at the
time the Phelps-Stokes Commission Report was
Published in 1925.
PHELPS-STOKES AND AFTER, 1925 — 1952
The main observation of the Phelps-Stokes
Commission was that education in Nigeria was
not adapted to the needs of the people (Lewis,
1962). This was because there was too much
emphasis on the academic curriculum. The
Nigerians in general preferred the academic
curriculum to the technical or agricultural one
because the past generations of pupils and
students following it had used their
qualifications as a ladder to the Universities
and other higher institutions of learning, and
in effect as a passport for attractive white-
collar jobs. The commission therefore
recommended that education in Nigeria should
be adapted to the real needs of the people.
Thus, in subjects like History, Geography,
Biology and the like, emphasis should be on
African countries rather than on European
countries. Further, attempts should be made to
train the masses on the one hand and local
leaders on the other. The subsequent attempts
by the colonial administration to provide
technical and agricultural education were
probably the results of a genuine acceptance
of the Phelps-Stokes recommendations. But
the truth was that the Nigerians themselves
consistently clamored for more and more
academic education of the Western type. In
the same year, the Advisory Committee on
Native Education in British Tropical Africa
made a similar observation and recommended
that the content and methods of teaching
various subjects in the school curriculum
should be adopted to suit African life and
surroundings. Apart from these two influences,
the Education Ordinance of 1926 exerted
considerable influence on the development of
the school curricula in Nigeria. The Ordinance,
among other things, provided for the rapid
growth of the schools' curricula through
regular inspection of the subjects taught in the
schools and the registration of teachers.
Although the ordinance provided
for the revision of the grants-in-aid system,
the system of ‘payment by results’ continued.
With the
provision for regular inspection of the schools
and the establishment of school committees
charged with the responsibility for regularizing
the educational activities of the schools, the
continuation of the scheme of ‘payment by
results’ meant that schools would continue to
appoint, as much as possible, the best qualified
teachers of each subject in the schools' so that
their pupils could pass well in the
examinations set in the various subjects and
thereby qualify the schools for adequate
grants-in-aid.
Another significant attempt by the Government
to influence the development of the grammar-
school curriculum was the directive it gave in
1930 that in every subject offered in Nigerian
Secondary Schools, Form 1 should attain a
standard equivalent to that required for a pass
in the Cambridge University Preliminary Local
Examination; that Form II should attain a
standard equivalent to that required for a pass
in the Cambridge Junior School Certificate
Examination; Form IV that of the Cambridge
School Certificate or London Matriculation
Examination; and Form VI that of the
Cambridge Higher School Certificate
Examination..The result was that in spite of the
observations and recommendations of the
Phelps-Stokes Commission and the Advisory
Committee, the content of formal education in
Nigeria was still closely patterned along the
British line as the British examining bodies
continued to exert considerable influence on
the grammar-school curriculum. While U. C. L.
E. S. continued to make its local examinations
available to school candidates in Nigeria
throughout this period (as did the Oxford
Delegacy during the years 1929 —1937) the
University of London continued to make the
London Matriculation Examination available to
private candidates, including student-teachers
from Wesley College (Ibadan), St. Andrew's
College (Oyo) and Hope Waddell Training
Institution (Calabar). In general, the primary
school and teacher training curricula were
similar to those of the preceding period. The
implication of all these for curriculum
development in Nigeria was that the grammar
schools ultimately adopted the policy of
preparing their pupils for the Cambridge
School Certificate Examination and in doing
this they gradually adopted the policy of
teaching in their schools only those subjects
that were being examined by U. C, L. E. S.
from year to year. By
1952, therefore, most grammar schools in
Nigeria included the following subjects in their
curriculum and taught them up to the School
Certificate level: English Language, English,
Literature, Religious Knowledge, History,
Geography, Latin, Elementary Mathematics,
Additional Mathematics, General Science,
Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Art and Technical
Drawing.
W. A. E.C. TO INDEPENDENCE 1952-1960
The West African Examinations Council (W. A.
E. C.) was established in March 1952, following
the recommendation of Dr. G. B. Jeffrey,
Director of the Institute of Education,
University of London, who had earlier been
asked by the British Secretary of State for the
Colonies to visit West Africa and advise on a
proposal that a body of this kind should be
established in that area. The Lagos office of the
Council was opened at Yaba in September
1953. The major role of the W, A. E. C. in
curriculum development during its early years
of existence was that of inspecting schools for
purposes of approving them and accepting
their pupils as private candidates for
Cambridge Overseas School Certificate (later
West African School Certificate) Examination.
This would normally encourage the grammar
schools to teach the various subjects normally
examined by the W. A. E. C. The establishment
of the W. A. E. C. was therefore an event of
considerable, perhaps over-riding, significance
in curriculum development in Nigeria. Apart
from the W. A. E. C., however, there were a
number of other factors influencing the
development of the schools' curriculum in
Nigeria. The various regional ministries of
education, for example, played an important
role. In 1959, for example, the former Eastern
Region revised its primary school curriculum
for the First School Leaving Certificate
Examination and also the Secondary School
Syllabuses in English, History and Geography.
Moves were also made to
revise the teacher training curriculum (Dike,
1959). The reason for this change was basically
political. In preparation for political
independence, which was promised for the
following year (1960), the former Eastern
Region realized the need to throw away part of
the British-type academic curriculum and
replace this with one that was more relevant to
the needs of the people. Efforts were also
made in other regions of the country to bring
about changes in the education system.
INDEPENDENCE AND AFTER, 1960 TO DATE
Nigeria regained her independence on 1st
October, 1960, a month after the submission
of the Ashby Report. With specific reference to
curriculum development, the Ashby
Commission recommended the introduction of
obligatory manual projects into secondary
schools and the provision of different types of
secondary school curricula, including
commercial, vocational and agricultural
courses. Further, the Commissioners
recommended that both the pre-service and
in-service training of teachers should be
intensified. They also recommended the
introduction of Advanced Teachers' Colleges, to
be associated with Universities. In the
Universities, a new undergraduate course, B.
Ed. (also variously styled B. A. (Ed.) and B. Sc.
(Ed.) should be introduced. The opening of
Advanced Teachers’ Colleges at Ibadan, Ondo,
Ilesha, Ikere-Ekiti, Ilorin, Ore and other areas
in the country, and the introduction of B.Ed.
courses in the Faculties of Education of Nigeria
Universities (Ibadan, Lagos, Ife, Ilorin, ABU,
Nsukka etc.) after independence are valid
evidences that this aspect of the Ashby
recommendations had been fully implemented.
Apart from the Ashby Report, other documents
do exist which tend to show the direction of
curriculum development in Nigeria since
independence. In the former Western Region,
for example, both the Banjo Report (1961) and
the Taiwo Report (1968) recommended the
revision of the school syllabuses and the
introduction of a new structure of education.
The Banjo Report specifically recommended a
new model for secondary education,
comprising junior and senior secondary
schools. The curriculum of the former should
be comprehensive. This was partly the origin of
the Aiyetoro Comprehensive School experiment
started in 1963. The Taiwo Committee
recommended that the primary-school
curriculum should be overhauled and new
syllabuses prepared in such subjects as
Mathematics and Social Studies. Similar
recommendations were made in the East (Dike
1959, Ivan Ikoku, 1964) Other bodies or
factors that have influenced curriculum
development in Nigeria since independence
are: the Nigerian Educational Research Council
(N. E. R. C.) the National Curriculum
Conference (1969) and the National Policy on
Education (1977; Revised in 1981). Although
the N. E. R. C. was not formally established, by
decree, until 1972, the move to establish the
body had started since 1961 and it had in fact
started to co-ordinate research activities in
Nigeria since the 1960s. It was under the
auspices of this body that the National
Curriculum Conference was held in Lagos in
1969. The Conference called for a well-defined
philosophy of education for Nigeria and
suggested the principles that should guide the
formulation of the objectives and curricula of
primary, secondary, teacher and higher
education in the country (Adaralegbe, 1972).
The proceedings of the National Curriculum
Conference provided the basis for the National
Policy on Education (1977). With specific
reference to curriculum development in
Nigeria, the policy advocates a 6—3—3—4
system, and suggests that the junior secondary
schools should operate a comprehensive
curriculum, in preparation for specialization at
the upper levels. During the year immediately
following independence, the W. A. E. C.
undertook a gradual revision of the School
Certificate Syllabuses, especially in History,
Mathematics, French, English Language and
Literature (now Literature in English), Physics,
Chemistry and Biology (W. A. C. E. VII/2 1964).
It also increased the number of its examinable
subjects. Secondary Schools in the country
accordingly revised their own curricula. This
gradually led to a swing of candidates from the
traditional subjects to the new ones, and also
to such science subjects as Physics, Chemistry
and Biology, presumably because there are
now better qualified teachers of this subject
and better equipment for teaching them.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion and general view, the
missionaries controlled the Nigerian School
Curricula between 1842 and 1882. And From
the latter date, the Government gradually
involved itself in the provision of education
and in curriculum development. At first,
government involvement start form grants to
the missions and the promulgation of
education ordinances and codes. Later, the
government started to open its own schools, to
take over existing schools and to establish
Examination and Research Councils to
regularize the school curriculum, and to set up
commissions to advise it on curriculum
innovations and development. Largely due to
the efforts of the W. A. E. C. and the demands
of the grammar schools, the number of
examination subjects steadily increased over
the years and new subjects were added so that
such traditional subjects as History and
Geography gradually attracted smaller
proportions of candidates than the science
subjects which are now apparently handled by
more qualified teachers, using better and more
reliable equipment.
REFERENCES
Adeyinka, A. A. (1983). A Study of the
Place of History in the Evolution of the
Nigerian Secondary
Grammar-School Curriculum. Cardiff: Ph.
D. Thesis (Wales).
Ajayi, J. F. Ade (1963). ‘The Development of
Secondary Gram mar-School
Education in Nigeria', journal of the
Historical Society of Nigeria 2 (4),
Dec. 523.
Eastern Nigeria (1959). The Dike Report on
the Primary School Curricula.
Eastern Nigeria (1964). Report of the
Conference on the Review of the Education
System in
Eastern Nigeria (Alvan Ikoku Report).
Enugu: Government Printer.
Good, Carter (1959). Dictionary of
Education, New York: McGraw-Hill Book
Co.
Lewis, L. J. (1962). Phelps-Stokes Report on
Education in Africa. London: O. U. P.
Nigeria, Federal Ministry of Education
(1960). Investment in Education: The
Report of the
Commission on Post-School Certificate and
Higher Education in Nigeria. (Ashby
Report).
Lagos: Federal Ministry of Education.