The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has asked for a review of Nigeria’s educational curriculum to ensure that it is up to date.
Mr. Ydo Yao, Director of the UNESCO International Bureau of Education (IBE), made this request on Tuesday during a capacity building training event for employees of the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja.
Yao said that in order to overcome the education crisis, steps to make the syllabus relevant for assuring quality in education and ensuring that values, knowledge, and skills flourished were required.
He said that the syllabus was a critical and irreplaceable component of any educational strategy, as well as a critical component in the change of education.
“You know, we used to say that a curriculum is for education, while a constitution is for democracy.” It signifies that the curriculum is fundamental to schooling.
“When we talk about education, we’re talking about content, programmes, and learning.”
“So, if you want to transform education but don’t transform what’s at the heart of it, which is learning, content, and programmes, your transformation is meaningless,” he remarked.
Yao regarded the curriculum as overburdened, outmoded, and lacking in current development, indicating the need for a reassessment.
He said that the training was implemented to develop the skills of ministry professionals and officials via eight topical modules.
Meanwhile, Mr. Goodluck Opiah, Minister of State for Education, stated that steps had been taken in the country’s curriculum transformation plan.
According to Opiah, the ministry is already working on democratising the curriculum revision process in order to give all essential stakeholders, including parents and students, a voice.
“We recognise the critical role of curriculum in the pursuit of globally agreed-upon goals and country-specific aspirations.”
“It remains the singular instrument capable of transforming a nation’s human capital base for effective contribution to nation-building and development.”
“As a result, curriculum and policy issues were identified and prioritised in setting our education targets as articulated in the Ministerial Strategic Plan (MSP) (2019 to 2022) for the education sector,” he added.
Prof. Ismail Junaidu, Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Educational Research Development Council (NERDC), said the ministry has continued to develop school curriculum with knowledge and skills on entrepreneurship, job creation, and capital market research, among other things.
Junaidu said that teachers and education managers have also been given resource materials to assist them in effortlessly implementing the curriculum.
“It warms our hearts at NERDC that this workshop is taking place at a time when we are planning to review the senior secondary education curriculum.”
“As part of the review preparations, we developed a syllabus review model based on a participatory and equity framework.”
“A model that gives a voice to all legitimate citizens in the syllabus development process,” he said.
According to the media, the 16-week programme would include courses on policy discourse and formation, syllabus revision, syllabus design, system administration, and governance.
Other activities include the creation of textbooks and other teaching and learning materials, the development of syllabus implementation capacity, syllabus implementation processes, and student assessment and syllabus evaluation.
