New Telegraph

Don harps on need to strengthen teacher education, curriculum

Kayode Olanrewaju

 

Former Executive Secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), Emeritus Professor Peter Okebukola, has stressed the urgent need to strengthen teacher education, improvement in content knowledge; development and use of new teaching methodologies that are compliant with the new breed of learners; and skills in the use of technologies.

 

Besides, he also called for curriculum review at the basic education level, saying the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) should undertake a comprehensive review of the curriculum of basic education to make it better fit for the future that the country craves. According to him, the National Commission of Colleges of Education (NCCE) and the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) should be part of the curriculum re-engineering agenda of which the National Universities Commission (NUC) has shown the lead.

 

He, however, noted that the success story of NUC in the development of the 2022 Core Curriculum Minimum Academic Standards (CCMAS) is a classical case of strengthening education for the future. Okebukola disclosed this in the keynote address he presented at the Seventh Conference of the Faculty of Education, Lagos State University (LASU), with the theme: “Building the Future through Empowering Education.”

 

Meanwhile, Okebukola called on the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Prof. Ibiyemi Olatunji-Bello in particularly, and other critical stakeholders and policy makers to empower the Faculty of Education in the universities by deploying all human resources required for building the system, saying the glorious future of the country will be taught directly or indirectly by teachers from a Faculty of Education of a Nigerian university.

 

“The Faculty of Education produces teachers who offer service at the secondary and tertiary levels. In turn, these teachers teach the future local government council chairmen, state governors, future presidents of the country, doctors in our hospitals, engineers for our manufacturing and construction industries and other personnel in the public and private sectors,” he added.

 

He, however, projected that by 2050, the country would require quadruple the current number of primary and secondary school teachers, as well as triple the academic staff for the higher education system, more than half of which will be for the university system.

 

By 2050, Okebukola, the Pro-Chancellor/Chairman of Governing Council of National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), said the country would have had over 300 universities, given the 219 universities (federal, state and private) currently.

To assure the attainment of the 2050 goals, we need human resources that only education can guarantee in quantity and quality.

According to him, in the next 30 years the majority of students around the world may no longer have to physically go to school in order to get an education, but rather they will be able to log in from their home, a common room in their building, or a dedicated space in their community.

Therefore, he stated that strengthening education, which should be a top priority for the government and other stakeholders, especially institutions, would mean providing the enabling environment that will improve access, relevance, efficiency, effectiveness and equity of the education system.

 

But, to drive this, the don stressed that what is urgently needed is quality leadership at all levels of governance that is people-oriented, God-fearing and corruption shunning, saying without such leadership, the future we are forecasting may be dim.

While insisting that the much-improved teacher welfare package approved by President Muhammadu Buhari should be implemented nationwide, he added that other highlights for strengthening teacher education include improvement in content knowledge; development and use of new teaching methodologies that are compliant with the new breed of learners; and skills in the use of technologies.

 

He also expressed the optimism that the lead and contributed papers would provide deeper insights into how these could be achieved, while the communique of the conference would contain far-reaching recommendations that will galvanise action among all stakeholders.

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