Forum seeks review of ICT courses in schools

Experts and other stakeholders have urged the Federal and state governments to redesign the information and communications technology (ICT) courses in the nation’s school curriculum to enhance Digital Safety Education (DSE) in line with 21st-century needs.

They made the call on Thursday in Abuja at a Digital Safety Education Session, and Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum organised by the Paradigm Initiative (PI), with the theme “Digital Education: A Prerequisites for implementing 21st Century Curriculum”.

One of the Panelists, Dr Tanimu Ibrahim, a lecturer at the Federal University, Dustinma, Katsina State, stressed the need for updating the ICT, training and retraining of teachers to help pupils acquire technologically based knowledge at all levels of education in the country.

“There are numerous challenges, but my advice for teachers is to look beyond the challenges and forge ahead to equip themselves with ICT skills, for the nation to overcome digital illiteracy and for the pupils to explore positive advantages of Internet,” Ibrahim said.

Speaking on relevance of Digital Education, another panellist, who is also a lecturer with the Federal College of Education, Kano, Dr. Patrick Babagbemi, urged education stakeholders to change irrelevance courses or subjects hindering performance of students in schools.

Babagbemi said, “There is urgent need for stakeholders to remove unwanted courses or subjects that are not related to students’ course of study. All these constitute hindrances to the performance of students.”

Also, a computer science teacher in Government Secondary School (GSS), Apo, Abuja, Mr. Zakaria Dado, stressed the need for joint and rapid approach by all stakeholders to address what he described as Digital colonization so that knowledge and experiences learned would be domesticated and useful.

On her part, the co-host of the summit, Mrs. Suliyat Idris, urged the government, parents and teachers to ensure the implementation of Digital Safety Education at all levels of learning for the nation to get rid of all challenges associated with ICT learning and implementation.

She said, “The essence of this platform is to advocate Digital Safety inclusion in school curriculum for the nation to be at levels with the rest of the world.”