Former Executive Secretary, National Universities Commission (NUC), Professor Peter Okebukola has called on the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) to carry out a comprehensive review of the basic education curriculum and make it suitable for the attainment of a genuine socio-economic prosperity for the country.
He also called on the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) and the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) to do likewise at their respective jurisdiction just as the NUC had done to make the re-engineering agenda to covers the entire country’s education system.
Okebukola, who is the chairman of the Governing Council, National Open University of Nigeria, made the call at a conference organised by the Faculty of Education, the Lagos State University (LASU), Ojoo, recently.
He spoke on the theme of the forum: “Empowering Education: Building the Future.”
He said NUC had already taken the lead by moving from the old Benchmarks Minimum Academic Standards (BMAS) policy to the Core Curriculum and Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS), where the university curriculum is developed to meet the global need of the 21 century economy. Each university is allowed to design curriculum of up to 30 per cent of its courses to reflect the uniqueness of its mission and contextual peculiarities.
He said it was only through the re-engineering of curriculum across levels of education that could help to appreciably strengthen the sector both for the current needs and that of the future.
He noted that education is so crucial that no nation of the world could grow and develop beyond the level of quality of its education.
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He said it is the only sector that could produce quality human resources required to attain the future goals.
“For instance, population of most African countries including Nigeria would have quadrupled their current number by 2050 and that such population explosion will certainly pose serious deficit on housing, public transportation, food security, insecurity, industry, education as well as health and the environment,’’ he said.
Okebukola, who commended the Dean of Faculty of Education of LASU, Professor Tunde Owolabi for what he called improved delivery of programmes of the faculty and staff welfare, noted that for Nigeria to significantly address such projected huge population, it would need between triple and five times of the current number of human resources for each sector of the economy.
He said for example, Nigeria would need up to 320,210 doctors and 781,353 nurses and five times the current number of pharmacists in 28 years time among, other sectors.
He said it means the country would need to take its education sector more seriously particularly by investing appreciably in teachers’ education.
He said teachers produce other professionals across fields and also reproduce themselves for primary to tertiary education levels.
He, however, urged both the federal and state governments to implement the new welfare package as approved by President Muhammadu Buhari for the primary and secondary school teachers nationwide.
Other areas of teacher education that need to be strengthened according to Okebukola are content knowledge; development and use of new teaching methodologies and technological skills that are compliant with the new breed of learners.
He also advocated urgent need for good quality leadership that is people-oriented, God-fearing, and corruption shunning at all levels of governance in public and private sectors.
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