It is an insult that a Nigerian child could name thousands of foreign leaders but the same child knows nothing about his or her country’s leaders. It is shameful.
In an effort toward the implementation of the new curriculum planned for the next academic session, Evans Publishers and Nelson Publishers in collaboration with the Lagos State Ministry of Education organised a 4-hour training session with public and private school teachers to get them familiar with the content of the new curriculum. The training session which was held today Thursday 13 June, 2019 focused on History as a separate subject from primary school to senior secondary school.
At the training session were representatives from the Ministry of Education and former Head of Southwest at the Nigerian Education Research and Development Council, Dr Moses O Salau. Dr Moses talked extensively on “Achieving Effective Curriculum Content” with the introduction of History as a compulsory subject.
Mrs Adegbamigbe Esther, the HOD, Curriculum Service Department, Lagos State Ministry of Education, spoke on the roles of the state education ministry in the national curriculum. She enumerated the functions of her department as follows.
• Division of national curriculum into schemes of work for all schools in the state.
• Evaluation of schemes of work used in the state schools.
• Review of recommended books in schools across the state
• Coordination of Subject Teachers Association
She said, ” A good curriculum must be domesticated in order to facilitate understanding in the class.” “The content of the curriculum must not be too distant from the students,” she added. She also emphasised that the age of the learners must be considered before admission into class. “A student may be intelligent but not fit into a system. The system should be a determining factor, and that’s why all schools must set the same standard that does not give room for compromise,” she said. She therefore added that new schemes are now available for the next academic session. All schools in the state are mandated to get the new schemes. And the highlight of her speech was that Religious Studies is no longer part of National Values but a separate subject.
The final part of the session focused on “The Revised 9-Year Basic Education Curriculum, English Studies Perspective. The speaker, a classroom English Studies teacher, talked extensively on the roles of English grammar and phonetics in the implementation of the national curriculum. He said as the language of instruction and evaluation, it is important teachers understanding its grammar and sound system. ” Grammar and phonetics are interwoven. They are dependent on each other to ensure effective communication, ” he explained. He further stated that if the language of the curriculum is not understood, then interpretation will be difficult. While he presented numerous cases of grammatical anomalies, he ended his speech with a practical demonstration of commonly mispronounced words such as: insatiable, debt, lethal,etc. The highlight of his speech was his stand that phonics should be handled by the class teachers to really foster effectiveness .
It was an exciting training session. Kudos to the organisers.
Result of the agitations of some of us who remain hellbent on the return of History to our school.
However, we wish to see a rich curriculum that will address our past and bold enough to predict our future.