Some stakeholders in the Nigerian educational and Information Communications Technology sector on Thursday in Lagos gathered to deliberate on how best to rejig the country’s educational system for optimum performance.
Tagged, African EduTech Conference, the stakeholders at the event organised by the Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with EduFirst.ng; a subsidiary of Skool Media with support from Olashore International School and other organisations, called for a situation that will ultimately reduce illiterate adults and out of school children put at 60 million and 10.2 million respectively.
They argued that for the situation, which they described as ugly to be ameliorated, there must be a collaboration between the government and the private sector.
“For us to have a headway in this our attempt to revamp the Nigerian educational system,all hands must be on deck to ensure the nation’s education system is focused on churning out graduate with 21st skills set,” said Arch. Sonny Echono. Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education.
Echono, who also served as the Keynote Speaker at the event, added that technology is the ultimate tool to leverage to enable viable education and job creation. “With the depressing statistics, there is need to provide access, modernised delivery mechanism for teaching; increase the number of teachers; provide enabling environment and ensure even resources, as means to recreate the education system,” he advised.
Speaking further, he said education system has to provide graduates with adequate skills for present and future workplace, disclosing that CBN’s 2018 statistics shows that Diaspora remittances to Nigeria exceeded the proceeds from oil revenue. In other words, we are no longer an oil economy rather human resource-based nation. Therefore, we need to stop brain drain.
Earlier, the Acting President and Chairman in Council, Nigerian-British Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Kayode Falowo, said that Conference: ‘Education, Technology & Jobs; A Synergy that Works’, was convened as part of the Chamber’s mandate to support the socio-economic development of Nigeria through educational development.
He said the Chamber African Edu-Tech platform will continue to provide the government, regulatory agencies, e.g Federal Ministry of Education, NUC, NERDC, WAEC, etc. and educational professionals, the opportunity to interact and share experiences on the revitalization of Nigeria’s education system, through the application of technology and innovation as key ingredients for educational transformation.
On his part, the General Manager, Partnership Implementation at Skool Media Nigeria Limited, Mr. Charles Dungor, said that the goal for African Edu-Tech Conference was to bring all stakeholders in the education space to brainstorm on how best engineer a better system that recognises need for grooming students with 21st Century skills.
“I am sure that in the global scale we all know what is happening in Nigeria due to the decadence in the Nigerian educational system. We believe developing a platform as this will be an avenue for people to interact: proffer solutions; get public-private participants under a roof to dialogue and see how best to tackle the challenges so we can become globally competitive,” he noted.
Dungor believes that the goal is simple: Meaning, we have a lot of young people moving from the Secondary and colleges to universities, and other graduating from the universities, but they are not employable. This informed the theme of the conference, ‘Education, Technology & Jobs; A Synergy that Works’. How does this work? It deals with a competitive and effective interaction among stakeholders in the education sector, innovation (ICT) ecosystem, public-private sector participants to synergize,” Mr. Dungor said.
He continued, “As the first edition there will be a communiqué from the Conference to be sent to the government to highlight issues that were portrayed and solutions or recommendations proffered to resolve those educational issues.
“We have the body in charge of curriculum; the NCC that regulates telecoms and can recommend how they could go about assisting the education sector through their product offerings; NECO, which is an examination body and also WAEC; I believe some of their takeaways from this conference will reflect in decision and policy-making processes, just as the Acting Minister of Education, Arch. Sonny Echono who doubles as the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, delivered the keynote; he spoke ‘to the topic’ and proffered solutions from the Government point of view. He also staked clearly what the government is doing to bridge the gaps in the system and took feedback from the participants mostly from the private sector”.