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Education: Don urges govt not to review current curriculum
 

Posted: Saturday, September 4, 2010

A don, Prof. Mopelola Olusakin, yesterday in Lagos, urged government not to review the current curricula of primary and secondary schools until they are thoroughly evaluated.
“It is only the report of a properly constituted review committee that should be the basis of any review exercise,’’ said Olusakin, Head, Department of Educational Foundation, University of Lagos (UNILAG).
She told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) that just as the Justice Uwais report constituted part of the input to the new Electoral Act of Nigeria, the education sector should be treated in a similar manner.
In her comments, Prof. Ohiri Aniche said that the call for a review of the current curricula was premature as a proper evaluation had yet to be done.
Aniche,  Professor of Igbo Language, UNILAG, said that a review of the curricula without a thorough evaluation would negate Nigeria’s philosophy on education.
She said that a periodic evaluation should precede any review exercise, noting that this had not been done for the existing curricula. “In a planned educational system, evaluation should be done twice or thrice after a three-year implementation period of any policy.
“The periodic evaluation is to ascertain the areas that need to be reviewed for sustainable development as it is not proper to do holistic review after a short time of implementation,’’ she said.
Mr Gbolahan Oladeji, a doctoral candidate at the University of Ibadan, said that wholesale review of a nation’s education curriculum should not be done until after 30 years of implementation.
Oladeji, whose research area is in curriculum theory said that government was not properly implementing the current education curricula.
He said that implementation was a critical area that government needed to address because that segment of the policy cycle was pivotal to the development of the sector.
He said that the Universal Basic Education Programme of government, if properly implemented, would halt the shortage of manpower for industrial growth of Nigeria.
He said that poor implementation of the 6-3-3-4 system of education was adversely affecting technical education as most students hardly opt for technical schools.