As Nigeria prepares to effect a new school curriculum change in the education sector come September this year, AUGUSTINE OKEZIE examines the several pitfalls the country should watch out for
Recently the executive secretary of the Nigeria Education Research and Development Council, Professor Godswill Obioma announced that a new school curriculum that will ensure qualitative education both in content and practice that can guarantee best practices is to be launched in the country by September this year.
Addressing the media shortly at the end of the 2nd quarterly meeting of 22 parastatals in the federal ministry of Education, hosted by his organization at their corporate headquarters in Abuja, Professor Obioma said that a portal for E curriculum for senior secondary schools that will ensure access to smart phones, teaching guides and so on, will also take off in August this year.
The new Senior Secondary School Curriculum which was developed by the National Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) was proposed by the National Council on Education (NEC) to be implemented from September, it was also envisaged that by this plan, the old curriculum will be phased out and completely discarded by 2014.
There are however several unanswered questions which constitutes such grey areas like: structure, the fields of study, subjects in these fields, those subjects that make up the 34 trade/entrepreneurship subjects and whether students will still be taking WASCE, SSCE, and NABTEB at the end of their 3 year secondary education?
Other questions that are still being asked are, when are we expecting the first batch of new SS students from the new curriculum , and the issue of facilities and equipment considering the systematic phase by phase implementation, revision of old books, preparation of new text books where appropriate etc.
The implications of the new curriculum for the girl child in the Northern part of the country, as well as accommodating anticipated challenges in other newly introduced programmes like the Almajiri Education Project, represents other questions that are begging for answers
Though answers to some of these questions have been provided by the NERDC, some still continue to agitate the minds of teachers, parents, students and other stakeholders in the region.
There is therefore the urgent need to find out how the new curriculum could among others benefits, reduce, or completely eliminate mass failure of students in public examinations as well as engender conducive learning environment for the students.
Implementation
One major question that is begging for answers is on whether the component states are ready to implement the new school curriculum in terms of availability of the requisite teaching personnel, the equipment ant sufficient number of classrooms. Recalling that at the last meeting of the National Council on Education in Abuja, most states openly confessed their unpreparedness to cue into the new curriculum.
Rather than a hasty implementation of the new policy, the authorities should take a census of participating states and their state of preparedness before embarking on the project.
Government at all levels must look into the issue of reviving relevant institutions such as the teachers’ training colleges, to fast track the implementation of the new curriculum change.
An Educationist, Dr Margret Lawani, while commenting on the invaluable role teachers training college could play said “we should go back to reviving the former system of Teachers’ Training College in the country, which I was opportune to pass through and if you ask most of these directors, they passed through that system and because of that training, going through teachers’ college, NCE, I am now a professional teacher”
She continued “In the Teachers Training College, most of the things we learnt were infant methods not methods to do with teaching elders. You find out that now in secondary schools we have children from the ages of twelve and above. That was not the method then, in the Teachers’ College”.
Massive production of teaching staff that are to undertake the teaching of the new curriculum is an important foundation that ought to be laid before contemplating the final take off of the new policy.
NERDC boss Prof. Godswill Obioma, had earlier the new curriculum for the nation’s senior secondary schools, as not only designed to equip the pupils with skills needed to function in tertiary institutions, but to also expose them to vocational studies. He further explained that the restructuring of the SSS Curriculum resulted in the development of 42 subjects and 34 vocational Trades/Entrepreneurship curricula, addimg that the new curriculum will also provide a systematic connection between its contents and the learning of future contents.
Furthermore he stated that the curriculum is structured in a way that will ensure that senior secondary school graduates are well prepared for higher education and that they had acquired relevant functional trade/entrepreneurship skills needed for poverty eradication, job creation and wealth generation.
The Professor of Mathematics Education and Evaluation said while the structure of the curriculum in use comprises of 20 subjects, the newly revised curriculum has 10. This reduction in subject’s listings, he explained, was achieved by grouping related disciplines.
His words: “Related UBE subjects curricula like Home Economics and Agriculture are brought together to create a new UBE subject curriculum called Pre-Vocational Studies. Similarly, Islamic Studies, Christian Religious Studies, Social Studies, Civic Education and so forth that focus primarily on the inculcation of values (societal, moral, interpersonal) now form a new UBE subject called Religion and National Values”
Obioma added that the review has ensured that topics are not repeated in various subjects.
“Key concepts in the former curricula now form integrating threads for organizing the contents of the new subjects into a coherent whole. In the process of the review, particular efforts were made to eliminate content repetitions within and across subjects to further reduce the overload and encourage innovative teaching and learning techniques,” he said.
In line with the framework for reviewing the curriculum which was adopted at a national stakeholders’ forum on February 9, Obioma said pupils in primaries 1-3 are to offer a minimum of seven subjects and maximum of eight subjects; while those in primaries 4-6 are to take a minimum of eight subjects and maximum of nine subjects.
JSS 1- 3 students are to offer a minimum of nine subjects and a maximum of 10 subjects – a huge departure from the 14-18 subjects they took before. He explains the rationale for reducing the subject listings at the basic education level from 20 to 10.
He said: “Recent feedback on the implementation of BEC suggests that the curriculum is overloaded in terms of the numbers of subjects offered at the basic education level. A major outcome of the presidential summit on the state of education in Nigeria which held on October 4 and 5, 2010 was the need to reduce the curriculum offerings. For example, pupils in Kenya offer seven subjects; Tanzania, eight subjects; United States of America, six subjects; Malaysia and Indonesia, nine subjects each. Consequently, NERDC was mandated to revise the nine-year BEC”.
