The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono has urged the management of colleges of education in Nigeria to emphasise the deployment of modern technology to make their students competitive with their peers globally.
Echono spoke during a one-day workshop on “Emerging Areas of Students Needs in Beneficiary Institutions’’ Organised by the fund on Wednesday in Abuja.
He particularly charged the lecturers overseeing career centres in colleges of education to develop skills in modern technology and pass on relevant knowledge to students to make them employable and globally competitive.
He said: “Let’s make sure we make the sacrifice of training ourselves because this former way is not going to last; there are new ways and new skills in communication.
“Don’t make your students as analogue as we are; let them be able to compete with their peers and stay on top of the game with cutting-edge technology that has become normal in other countries.”
Echono revealed that TETFund introduced the Career Services Centre to complement other programmes in tertiary institutions in the 2024 disbursement cycle.
“The Fund considers the establishment of these centres necessary for the development of students’ careers and their employability, which is the raison d’être for the establishment of tertiary educational institutions. Career services centres have helped students in advanced nations make informed decisions regarding their career paths,” he said.
According to him, the workshop was conceived mainly for the purpose of brainstorming over some identified areas of intervention that are seen to be highly beneficial not only to the institutions but also to students, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of all the interventions in the tertiary institutions.
Speaking further on the career centres, he said they “provide information for students on trends in the job market, opportunities, and requisite skills, as well as linkages with the employment industries, including the alumni of the institutions.
“They provide students with tools for self-assessment to identify their interests, strengths, weaknesses, and prospects. Career centres further provide counselling, guidance, and support to all students.”
The TETFund boss also disclosed that “the Fund recently received a communication from the Federal Ministry of Education regarding the Presidential directive to TETFund on the support of teaching practice and the recommendations of the National Salaries, Incomes, and Wages Commission regarding the teaching practice allowance, which now includes faculties of education in our universities.”
He, however, noted that the issue required collective brainstorming that may lead to the reworking of the teaching practice funding template currently in use.
“The methodology employed in the computation of the allowance by the Fund and that of the Salaries, Incomes, and Wages Commission appear to be different, hence the need for harmonisation to achieve shared acceptance.
“The Fund, by all means, recognises the significance of the inclusion of students, teachers, and the faculties of education, which is to make the teaching profession more attractive.
The National President of the Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU), Dr Smart Olugbeko, noted that the workshop was aimed at addressing issues with emerging students’ needs in areas of career centres, teaching practices, and the development of hostels, among others.
While commending TETFund for the implementation of career centres, he urged the centres to look into the issue of the employability of students from the colleges, as employers of labour have raised such concerns over it.
“The major area of concern that we need to look into is the employability of our students because it is one of the major areas of concern employers of labour have been talking about whether our graduates are actually employable.
“It is not just about the content of what we teach in our various schools; it is also about how we have prepared our graduates, our students, for them to be able to teach in our various schools or become employable when they leave the various institutions,” he said.
He stressed the importance of skills development among those manning the career centres to be well equipped in order to train students to be able to perform such functions, adding that you can’t give what you don’t have.
Olugbeko also appealed to TETFund to ensure uniformity in infrastructure, stating that it will not be appropriate to ask institutions to go and set up career centres without uniformity and functionality of infrastructure like the microteaching infrastructure provided by the government in all the colleges.
“If we allow institutions to make use of infrastructure that is not adequately designated to perform the function of career centres, then we will have career centres that are not functional,” he said.
The COThe Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc. Sonny Echono has urged the management of colleges EASU President further called on TETFund to upscale its monitoring and evaluation activities in the centres, warning that no matter the level of intervention provided, a deficient monitoring function will not produce anything meaningful from them.
On his part, the Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education, Prof. Paulinus Okwelle, expressed gratitude to TETFund for the intervention in career centres in CoEs and other tertiary institutions.
Okwelle noted that cancelling in the institution has to go beyond making career choices to look at how to fit into the various career paths that can be found in education, stating that educators have more work to do now in society than before.
ALSO READ THESE TOP STORIES FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE
and then