By Funmilayo Adeyemi
Abuja – As Nigeria joins 51 other countries to celebrate the commonwealth day, experts have called for multifaceted approach to reviewing the content and scope of educational curriculum.
They spoke in Abuja on Saturday at the 2018 Pre-Commonwealth Day Youth Lecture and Rehearsal organised by the Ministry of Education with the theme: “Towards a Common Future”.
Mr Uzoma Nwachukwu, Programme Director, ‘Read a Book and Win’ a Prize Initiative, said the education of today falls short of the standard required for actual self reliance.
According to him, we need to review our curriculum so that education can have a more contemporary focus.
“We must work collectively through the government regulatory agencies to give the educational sector a face lift.
“We use to have education inspectorate then to monitor educational activities in schools in those days but this is not happening again.
“We also need to go back to the basis and ensure that the curriculum is reviewed to meet up with international standards.
“If education must be the key to a better future, we must begin to critically examine the content, scope and functionality of educational system in the country,”he said.
Nwachukwu also stressed the need to tackle corruption in the educational sector.
He added that corruption in the sector manifest itself as exam malpractice in special centres abated by stakeholders including parents and teachers.
He said that focus had been shifted to corruption in politics, while calling on stakeholders to desist from encouraging all manners of corruption in the system.
He also urged students to desist from act of drug abuse, malpractices, cultism and others as this would prevent them from climbing their utmost height.
Also, Mrs Mary Ameh, Deputy Director, National and International Partnership Division, said the quality of education a country would make such country compete favourably with its counterparts.
She said that education was the key to unlocking opportunities of nation and its citizens.
She, however, urged students to take their education serious as this would help sustain s country’s social and economic development.
The News Agency of Nigeria, (NAN) reports that the Commonwealth of nation is an intergovernmental organisations made up of 52 member States that are mostly former territories of the British Empire.
The Commonwealth dated back to the mid 20th century with decolonisation of British Empire through increased self government of its territories.
The member countries span across Africa, Asia, Americas, Europe and the Pacific. (NAN)