| The new Senior Secondary Education Curriculum (SSEC), developed by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), will come into force from September 2011, while the first Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE) in line with the new curriculum will hold in June 2014.
Executive Secretary of NERDC, Prof. Godswill Obioma, who made this known at a one-day “Roundtable on the Review of the Teacher Education programmes of Tertiary Institutions”, held in Abuja said all public examination bodies had been given copies of the draft curriculum to commence the process of restructuring the examination.
Minister of Education, Prof. Ruqayyatu Ahmed Rufa’i, who declared the roundtable open, said the review of teacher education programme in tertiary institutions in the country had become necessary in order to produce teachers with the required skills and competencies to cope with the challenges of the new curriculum
She said the new SSEC, comprising 42 subjects and 34 Trade and Entrepreneurship subjects, which was approved at the 54th National Council on Education (NCE) meeting this year; “has thrown new content standards within each subject matter that demands that serving teachers are re-skilled in the subject matter as well as in pedagogy”.
She therefore called “on all relevant regulatory agencies of the tertiary education sector and indeed all universities, polytechnics and colleges of education to immediately commence the process of reviewing tertiary education programmes to respond to local needs and at the same time meet the expectations of global best practices’.’
Obioma said the new curriculum is to ensure that every Senior Secondary graduate is well prepared for higher education, and must have acquired relevant functional trade/entrepreneurship skills needed for poverty eradication, job creation and wealth generation, which are capable of strengthening further the foundation for ethical, moral and civic value acquired at the basic education level.
Following the successful commencement of the implementation of the Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) in September 2008 at Primary 1 and JSSI, there was a yawning gap in the extant SSEC, with paradigm shift in content standards and pedagogical skill to meet both challenges of local needs and global competiveness, thus the proposal of the new SSEC, which was approved by the NCE in 2007.
- Thisday |
