Effect of MDG on Basic Education in a typical Nigeria Community Primary School In Enugu State

2015 marked the end of Millenium Development Goal (MDG) when the world bodies agreed to reduce extreme poverty by half, while achieving universal primary education especially in the developing world.

Fifteen years after, there are speculations that even though the MDG may have succeeded in increasing enrolment, it did not improve completion rate.

This paper therefore tested the above assumption using a qualitative research method conducting FGDs and KII among teachers, students and parents. The finding is that, while MDG truly increased enrolment by over 96% in 2000 – 2003, survival rate declined to about 72% from 2004 – 2008.

This shows that as more pupils entered, more also dropped. This is traceable to poor quality of education.

According to our case study, no effort was made to improve the quality of education as only one out of five teachers attended any form of training in the past 1 year. There was zero provision for basic infrastructure to aid teaching and learning in the school in the past 10 years.

Participatory development theory was used to measure the level of participation in this development project. It was discovered that institutionalized participatory perspective was utilized in the MDG intervention, which is the use of inputs by relevant stakeholders in a community as a tool to achieving pre-established goal as defined by an external body.

However, the paper hopes that community mobilization effort by ESSPIN through the formation of School Based Management Committee in each school in Enugu State enlightened the community members in preparation for the SDG.

“Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another” G.K. Chesterton.