Review our education curriculum now to meet 21st Century demands, FG told at Edutech Conference

The Federal and various state governments have been urged, to without delay, to review the current education curriculum to meet the demands of the 21st Century and peoples’ needs.

The stakeholders in the education sector, especially from the private sector, made the call at this year’s edition of the African Edutech Conference organised by the Nigerian British Chamber of Commerce (NBCC) in conjunction with the Education First Nigeria Limited(Edufirst. ng) and held virtually, recently.

According to them in a statement made available by the Head of Corporate Communications, Skool Media Limited, Mr. Sola Oluwadare, governments at all levels must have to wake up to work out digitalized learning environment and ensure that schools scale up blended classrooms for better learning outcomes.

The stakeholders included the President of NBCC, Mrs Adebisi Adeyemi; the CEO of Edufirst.ng, Mr. Moses Imayi; Programme Director, Digital Schoolhouse, Shahneila Saeed; Co-Founder, Digital Encode Limited, Dr Adewale Obadare; Director of Education, Corona Schools Trust Council, Mrs Amelia Dafeta; and the Principal of Greensprings School Lekki, Mrs Feyisara Ojugo, among others said in separate remarks, that schools particularly those owned by the government from primary to tertiary levels would need to be digitalized.

They added that their classrooms ought to be equipped with digital facilities and ensure their teachers are able to teach through projectors and not just mere e-learning.

They said in addition to that, the government must also find a way to make e-learning effective in the country by finding a workable solution to the myriad of challenges ranging from no or poor internet network, high cost of data and devices to poor supporting infrastructure like electricity, among others that are confronting the system.

They also decried the manner by which primary school students in public schools are not being exposed to quantitative reasoning as a separate subject like their private school counterparts and wondered how they would be able to compete effectively in the developed climes where digital education is now on the front burner.

President of NBCC, Mrs Bisi Adeyemi in her remarks, for example, harped on the role of technology in the education sector, maintaining that it is important that Nigeria and indeed Africa should have a rethink of its vision for the future of education and take a bold and practical step towards repositioning the sector to make African students more competitive in this age of globalisation.

According to her, with more than 70% of the African population are under the age of 30, it means the region has one of the youngest populations globally but infrastructure deficit, especially in the technology sector, has continued to slow down the requisite skills to grow the economy substantially.

She said whereas a key factor that is shaping the future of education in Africa is the technology and with mobile penetration now standing at over 50%, adoption of technology in Africa should be encouraged and promoted more.

Mrs Adeyemi explained that like in many other parts of the world, children in Africa are becoming digitally literate at a very early age and this development would further underline the massive opportunity technology represents for education.

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