Nigeria Content Online

The federal
government yesterday took steps to address the poor quality of
graduates that are churned out from our nation’s universities and has
directed the immediate commencement of the review of programmes of
tertiary institutions in the country.

The minister of
education, Ruqayyatu Rufa’I, gave this directive yesterday while
declaring open a Roundtable on the Review of Teacher Education
Programmes of Tertiary Institutions in line with the new Senior
Secondary School Education Curriculum organised by the Nigerian
Educational Research and Development council (NERDC) and during a
familiarisation visit to the NUC in Abuja.

Speaking while
declaring open the NERDC roundtable, the minister called on all the
relevant regulatory agencies of the tertiary education sector and
indeed all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education, to
immediately commence the process of the review of tertiary education
programmes to respond to local needs and at the same time meet the
expectations of global best practices.

This, according to
her, would constitute one of the quick wins programmes her
administration would embark upon in line with the ideals of human
capital development needs of our nation and attainment of Vision 2020
for Nigeria to become of the 20 top economies in the world. She said,
“If teacher education programmes in tertiary institutions are not
restructured in line with the demands of the new senior secondary
school education curricula, SSEC, then it will be difficult to produce
teachers with the required skill and competencies to cope with the
challenges of the SSEC.”

NERDC Executive
Secretary, Godswill Obioma, said the programme-specific context and
extant Teacher Education Programme in Universities, Polytechnics and
Colleges of Education, geared toward the production of pre-service
teachers for the Senior Secondary Education level, could no longer meet
the challenges and demands of the new SSE curriculum and needed to be
overhauled.

Mr. Obioma revealed
that following the approval for implementation of the SSEC by the
National Council on Education (NCE) at its 54th meeting early this
year, the Council has concluded arrangements for the implementation of
the curriculum beginning September 2011 from SS1.

Mrs. Rufa’I, who
was also briefed on the activities of the NUC by the Executive
Secretary of the commission, Julius Okojie, while expressing disgust at
the deterioration in the quality of education in the country,
especially university education, under the watch of NUC, stated that it
was a sad scenario that “Nigerians are losing confidence in the system”.

Professor Okojie
said, “I have gone through your document, I know quality is your
concern but then how do we restore the lost glory of universities? Of
course we can’t achieve that without looking at the basic education
level. But then since the mandate of the NUC is within the
universities, how do we begin to restore the lost glory; because people
are losing confidence in the system.”

“Really, the quality of the product that we are producing is very
low; even though we carry out accreditation exercise, monitoring of
programmes, but when you examine a product of any of our universities,
in comparison with the product of many years back, you will see that
there are gaps,” she said.