Investigating Challenges and Effects of Students’ Low Enrolment on the Sustainability of Primary School Education in Eastern Nigeria The Need for a Paradigm Shift

Abstract

The enrolment into primary schools in Nigeria has been low for several years now. The aim of this study is to examine the challenges and the effects of students’ low enrolment on sustainable primary school education in Eastern Nigeria. A structured questionnaire was used to gather primary data from one thousand and eight hundred teacher respondents of public primary schools in the region. The descriptive survey research design is employed. The gathered data were analysed using statistical mean. The results show that the socio-economic challenges of primary school students’ low enrolment include poverty, hunger, epidemics, parents’ inability to pay school fees, buy exercise books and other learning materials, the illness of a family member, early marriage and pregnancy, home services, gendered worldviews against sending female children to school, rituals, and culturally-insensitive education programmes. The effects of students’ low enrolment on primary school education include reduced efficiency in the school system, waste of human and material resources, thriving barriers to the child’s meaningful future, increased social vices, inadequate development of the individual’s potentialities, and barriers to employment and income. The study submits that primary school students’ low enrolment can be improved through the introduction of free transportation to school, free stipend for primary school children, practical school feeding programmes, free education, scholarships, and sustained effective monitoring and evaluation systems. It charges stakeholders and school management officials to be proactive and decisive on tackling the identified challenges by imbibing the aforementioned and other pragmatic measures.