The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, has hinted that the new education curriculum being developed will focus on skills and entrepreneurship in a bid to enhance the employability of graduates.
The Minister, who stated this at a one-day summit the National Universities Commission (NUC) organised in Abuja on Thursday.
Represented by the Executive Secretary of the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) Sonny Echono, the minister said the summit is being held ahead of the global summit in September in New York by the United Nations Secretary, which provides opportunity to brainstorm on the many challenges facing Nigeria’s education sector such as poor funding, out-of-school children among others, as to find sustainable solution and transform the sector.
According to him, five thematic areas have been identified for discussion.
“The issue of curriculum for example, it has become important that the education sector should be increasingly more relevant and the changing role of the teacher being a facilitator rather than absolute harbinger of knowledge.”
“The type of curriculum that will now focus more on skills, entrepreneurship bevsue we want to enhance employability. As we have been preaching, we don’t want to produce graduates that are looking for government employment,” he said.
The minister stated that the president has approved an institute in Abuja that resembles the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which will serve as a hub where all the top ideas of growing the country will be incubated and released for various sector of our economy, saying, the institute will take off this year.
Speaking, the Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Isa Pantami commended the NUC for developing a new curriculum for Nigerian Universities, saying was apt due to the rate of unemployability of graduates in the country.
“We always complain about unemployment, I agree that there is unemployment but the percentage is not as we think. The significant challenge we have in Nigeria is the problem of unemployability, particularly when it comes to sciences, engineering and technology.
“We need to provide the relevant skills so that they will be able to confront any challenge and can be able to apply for any job globally,” he said.
Chief Education, UNICEF, Saadhna Panday-Soobrayan, in her remark said Nigeria is off-track in achieving the sustainable development goal 4, saying the pandemic exacerbated the fragility of country’s education systems which was already struggling with poor access to quality learning and low resilience to shock.
“Additionally, frequent attacks on schools – including abduction of children, who should always be safe in school – has also resulted in prolonged school closures and is contributing to high rates of out of school children and low learning outcomes,” she said.
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