Information Systems for Educational Planning: a Case Study on the Need for Education Personnel Training in Kwara - Nigeria.

Abstract

For lack of adequate resources, not less than 50 percent of school children in Kwara state of Nigeria are pushed out of the educational system into the world of work, after six years of primary education. Without any vocational skill or effective agricultural training, they are ill-equipped for modern productive enterprises and are not perceived to be performing better in rural agricultural production. They often end up by joining the pool of the unemployed in urban areas or going back to the traditional peasant farming and remaining as highly underemployed as their poor parents. By exploring the state government's official data and the responses in an opinion survey of public perception on the effectiveness of the "European model" of education in rural areas of Kwara state, the research effort reported in this dissertation has established that: (1) as the school enrollment is rising rapidly in the state, the level of agricultural production in the villages is falling; (2) the emerging educated labor is drifting away from the l and and away from maual labor, and (3) a fundamental information gap is existing between educational policy makers and rural citizens in the state. Reconstructing an educational policy that would respond to rural development needs would involve: (1) instituting on-the-job training programs for out-of-school youths and the present adult producers of the economic commodities in rural areas; (2) cultivating a favorable attitude towards labor in school children, through radical reforms in school curriculum and the imposition of one year of "work experience," as a requirement for admission into high school, and (3) employing survey research methods as means of obtaining citizen feedbacks for decision-making. The thesis is concluded with a proposition of a training model for education personnel engaged in rural development programs in Nigeria.