Pitfalls and Projections of Secondary School Education in Nigeria

Education plays an important role in the development and globalization of any nation. It is the bedrock of social change and can often be described as an accelerator of social and economic progress. Secondary school education in Nigeria is the bridge between primary education and tertiary education. However, with as much importance as it carries, secondary school education in Nigeria is faced with a myriad of problems ranging from insufficient government funding to poor maintenance of infrastructure. This paper is aimed at highlighting some of the current problems stifling the development of secondary school education in Nigeria by addressing issues such as poor government funding, unavailability of infrastructure, poor maintenance of provided infrastructure, under qualified teachers, and poor supervision of schools. The study adopted exploratory research methodology through literature and documentary survey. This paper concludes that in order to achieve major improvements in secondary school education, the need to re-evaluate the priorities of the country in favor of education must be addressed. Also, issues of government funding must be re-addressed, governments should ensure that schools are properly and effectively supervised and inspected and extra effort needs to be put into ensuring adequately qualified teachers are recruited and remunerated accordingly, all in an effort to achieve meaningful development in secondary school education in Nigeria.