Nigeria’s decision to replace the long-standing 6-3-3-4 education system with a compulsory 12-year uninterrupted basic education model marks one of the country’s most significant education reforms in decades. The government argues that the new system will expand access to education, reduce the number of out-of-school children, and eliminate barriers between junior and senior secondary education. These are important objectives. But can a new school structure, on its own, fix an education sector that has been weakened by decades of underinvestment, inadequate infrastructure, teacher shortages, insecurity and deep social inequalities?

The answer is far from straightforward. Nigeria’s education crisis is not simply a structural problem; it is a systemic one. While reforming the education system may be necessary, changing the number of years students spend in school will achieve little unless the country also addresses the deeper challenges that continue to undermine learning outcomes and equal access to quality education.

For more than four decades, Nigeria operated the 6-3-3-4 education system, under which students spent six years in primary school, three years in junior secondary school, three years in senior secondary school and four years in tertiary institutions. Introduced in 1982 to replace the colonial-era 6-5-2-3 model, the system was intended to meet the country’s educational needs while equipping young people with practical and vocational skills. Today, however, the debate is no longer simply about whether the 6-3-3-4 model should be replaced.

Rather, it is whether changing the structure of schooling can resolve problems whose roots lie in governance, funding and implementation.

Against this backdrop, Minister of Education Dr. Maruf Tunji Alausa announced a major restructuring of Nigeria’s education system, proposing the replacement of the 6-3-3-4 structure with a compulsory 12-year uninterrupted basic education model. According to the government, the reform aims to improve access to education, reduce the number of out-of-school children, and eliminate the transition barriers between junior and senior secondary education before students proceed to tertiary education or vocational training.

At first glance, the proposal appears logical and ambitious. Yet it leaves several fundamental questions unanswered. How widely was this reform discussed before it was announced? Were parents, teachers, education experts, employers and other key stakeholders meaningfully consulted? More importantly, what evidence suggests that merging junior and senior secondary education will, by itself, improve access to education or reduce dropout rates?

The reality is that students are not dropping out simply because of the way the education system is structured. They are dropping out because the economic incentives for education have steadily eroded. When university graduates remain unemployed for years, public confidence in education inevitably declines. At the same time, rising poverty has made it increasingly difficult for many parents to keep their children in school.

Nor is the shortage of school places addressed by changing the education structure. Nigeria has approximately 81,000 public primary schools but only about 15,000 public junior secondary schools serving roughly 24 million enrolled pupils. This enormous gap creates a major transition bottleneck, preventing millions of students from progressing through the education system. The fundamental problem, therefore, is not the 6-3-3-4 structure itself, but the chronic shortage of adequately funded and properly equipped schools.

It is also worth noting that this proposal was first introduced by the Minister of Education during the 2025 Emergency National Council on Education meeting but failed to gain support because of inadequate consultation with key stakeholders. Many of the concerns raised then remain unresolved today and continue to cast doubt on whether the reform can achieve its intended objectives.

Misguided Focus and Faulty Priorities

By this proposal, it has been revealed that the government is merely interested in the number of out-of-school children, rather than the quality of education that the schools offer. This should not be the case if we truly want to regain the lost glory. To make education qualitative and competitive, the government must confront the core challenges of our current system, which include insecurity, which has led to incessant attacks on schools; religious beliefs, which have heavily discriminated against the girl child, among others. Currently, a plethora of vacancies remain unfilled in our public schools, yet thousands of trained teachers and professional school administrators remain unemployed.

Similarly, it is not feasible to run a 12-year Linear curriculum with teachers trained for the 6 to 3-3 split. How do you expect a JSS mathematics teacher who, over the years, has taught elementary fractions, decimals, and binary numbers to start taking students through geometrics and measurement, construction, quadratic equations, simultaneous equations, further mathematics, and calculus in a continuous progression?

According to the figures released by the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) for 2022/23, 33.3 percent of Nigeria’s basic school teachers lack proper qualifications. This leaves approximately 492,912 teachers without proper credentials across the country. Coupled with this is the sad reality where many states across the country owe teachers as much as 12-18 months’ salary arrears. If we do not fix these crises, among others, changing the education system would amount to mere nomenclature or name-changing.

The Primary-Secondary Territorial Disparity

In Nigeria, primary education is localised and can exist in isolated rural villages while secondary education is not only centralised across the regions, but also requires specialised facilities and diverse subject teachers, meaning they must naturally exist and function as central locations that integrate students from several primary schools. This arrangement as such makes it structurally difficult, if not impossible to enforce a uniform 12-year career path across all regions.

Absence or Lack of Vision

What is the government’s idea of education? Is it just about form or structure? What has happened to content? What is the content of education that our children now receive? For instance, are our children being educated to cultivate a shared national identity? Are they being educated to inculcate shared values and be patriotic citizens? Are they being educated to become good citizens or leaders that will rightly dispense justice, equity and accountability? Education is the foundation and future of every society. It is the fundamental that touches all lives in the society. So, if essential changes are to be carried out, it must be done through holistic consultation.

Funding Access and Equity

Funding has been a major challenge plaguing Nigeria’s education system. The Nigerian government has refused to properly invest or fund education in Nigeria. Budgetary allocations to education both at the state and federal levels have not lived up to the standard stipulated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. UNESCO recommends 15-20 percent of the national budget for education, but Nigeria has never hit as much as 10 percent. For instance, the 2026 budget allocated a paltry 6.15 percent to education. This paltry 6.15 percent allocated to education in the 2026 budget highlights a chronic underinvestment that has elicited severe, compounding crises across the sector. A 12-year education system requires greater funding for teacher’s training, lab facilities, new textbooks among others. And if we announce a 12-year system but fund it for like 9 years, we will get 9-year results in a protracted limbo of 12-year despondency.

Further, this proposal or reform assumes that every child will complete 12 years. This assumption may not necessarily be true. In the riverine communities of Bayelsa state, children miss 3 months a year due to flooding. In Zamfara, Borno and Sokoto states, girl’s completion rate for JSS is below 40 percent. If we do not fix poverty, child labour, security, the 12-year system will be a classic document failure.

On a final note, it is pertinent to state that while the 12-year education system gives children more time to learn, it does not necessarily remedy the challenges of lack of qualified teachers. Structures without funding, without teachers, without the prerequisite infrastructures and classrooms are not just shambolic, it is betrayal. Chronic underfunding, poor infrastructure, low teacher quality and of late insecurity, have not only strained Nigeria’s education system for decades, but will also further undermine efforts to improve literacy and learning outcomes.

If Nigeria truly wishes to achieve universal quality education under global development goals, it behoves on it to confront these chronic obstacles headlong.