Poor infrastructure, lack of parental controlbane of education in Nigeria – Meg Nwobia

Mrs. Meg Nwobia is the Director of Hallmark School,
Lagos. In this chat with Vanguard in her office, the
graduate of Education from the College of
Education Abraka and Metropolitan University in
London, speaks on her business and the challenges
and says standard of education in Nigeria has not
fallen. Excerpts:
After obtaining her National Certificate in
Education from College of Education Abraka, Mrs.
Meg Nwobia proceeded to Metropolitan University
in London where she got her Bachelor of Education
degree. Upon her return, she did her national youth
service at Air Force Primary School, Kaduna before
getting married and relocating to Ibadan.
"When I got married, we moved to Ibadan and I
taught at Loyola College. From there, we moved to
Lagos and I taught at Stadium High School until
1989 when I went to England," she said.
While in England, Mrs. Nwobia taught in various
schools and returned to Nigeria in 1996 to
establish a nursery school called Megdyke Nursery
School in Lagos.
She said: "After a few years, the school
metamorphosed into Hallmark School because the
parents were so happy with what we were doing
that they actually encouraged me to open a
primary school because all the children who passed
out from Megdyke, when they go to other schools,
it was like a repetition of what they had done and
they were all excelling and the parents had to put
pressure on me to open a primary school. That
pressure gave birth to Hallmark School which was
opened on October 2, 2002. We will be celebrating
our 10th anniversary on October 2 this year."
Speaking on the journey so far, Mrs. Nwobia said:
"Like any other business, even though this one has
to do with human relationship/children, it is really
challenging, rough sometimes, enjoyable; all the
things you expect from a business, but most
importantly, the joy of working with children and
seeing them come out and go to secondary school,
and come back to you each time.
You see them grow, you see how happy they are,
that is the reward you get. When they leave here
for secondary school, you find out that all their mid-
term breaks, they want to come back to Hallmark
School to see their friends, teachers and all that,
and we discovered that they are doing extremely
well in their various schools. Some of them are on
scholarships in their different secondary schools,"
she enthused.
Mrs. Nwobia who noted that she has always been a
teacher as she has not done anything work-wise
apart from teaching, said she does not believe that
the standard of education in Nigeria is falling,
rather, it is parents and government that have
failed the sector.
"People keep talking about falling education
standard but I don't believe standard of education
in Nigeria has fallen because the children are so
wise academically, they are doing well. What some
children are doing in Year Five today, when I was in
Form Three in secondary school, I did not know
them."
On the mass failures recorded in external exams,
she said: "You see, most of those failures may be
from the public schools but you still see that in
internal competitions, the public schools also excel.
The only thing that people can say is that there has
been a kind of neglect in infrastructure and in
monitoring what is happening in schools but not
that the education standard has fallen, I don't think
so.
Look at the way the children talk, the kind of
answers they give you when you ask them
questions. It doesn't show that they are lacking in
education. When children from Nigeria go abroad,
they excel. "Last year, I was in England when there
was a report on countries that have students in
England; they were looking at educational
standards.
Nigeria ranked very high, if not about the best. So
what is going on here is lack of infrastructure.
Again, we like paper qualification so parents are
helping their children to obtain these things by
unfair means. That is the problem. If the children
are taught well, they will excel.
It is just that parents are not doing what they are
supposed to do. If anything, I will say what has
fallen is parental control over the academics of
their children because some parents don't even
look at what their children are doing at all. This did
not happen in our time.
Our parents looked at our work, even those who
were not educated, somehow, they ensured that
the children did their work but now, you give
children homework and they bring it back to you.
This goes on through the week and month and you
call the parents and they tell you they are too busy
to even look at their children's work.
So, as far as I am concerned, the problem is
parents' lackadaisical attitude towards their
children's education and the failure of the state to
look after schools. Some parents can pay high
school fees but pay no attention to monitoring the
children's work."
Asked whether she intends to open a secondary
school in future, Mrs. Nwobia said: "There has been
pressure too like they pressured me in nursery
school. Even the children themselves want to
continue in Hallmark but I have not actually
thought about it as such because I feel that the
way education is going in Nigeria is not the way
education should go.
The background I have is not that you open a
nursery, primary, secondary and university. It
doesn't work that way. Hardly do you see such in
England. Private schools are very few and the
students are so few because it is private and
parents pay heavily so you do not see many
children going there when there are a lot of state
schools all over the place and actually, I have not
seen much of private primary schools.
What I have seen are private secondary schools and
they are very few. For instance, in the whole of
Ikeja, you can have just one. But if it is outside
London, sometimes they have some private schools
like Catholic schools so it is not something that is
very common so that background is still what is
keeping me because the proliferation of schools is
not doing well to our education system where a
school will have pre-crèche, nursery, primary,
secondary and university.
It's like making a mockery of education. So I have
not put my mind to it and if I am going to run a
secondary school, I cannot run it in the same place
where I have my primary school; it should be in a
different setting so that the children will move from
where they are to another place."
Mrs. Nwobia said she will like to see Hallmark
School reach its peak in the next five to ten years.
"I'm hoping that Hallmark will be the watchword
that when they talk about schools in the vicinity
where I am, Hallmark School should rank first."
Asked how she came about the name Hallmark, she
said: "When I was thinking of a name for the
school, I was thinking of a name that will ring a
bell. The name of a school should give it carriage.
So I was going out one day and I saw one very big
billboard belonging to Hallmark Bank.
The caption was what inspired me. It went
something like this: 'If you are as good as we are,
we can offer something that looks like you; or if you
are as good as you are, you have to live up to that
name,' something like that. I told my husband I
was going to call the school Hallmark. What
Hallmark depicts is that you are there already and
you must try and maintain that position."