An Educationist, Mrs Cornelia Okwori, has criticised the current trend of admitting immature students into higher institutions.

She was reacting to the observation that some children between 15 years and 16 years were being admitted into universities.

In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja, Okwori, a secondary school teacher, said that no child less than 17 years should be into university.

According to her, school curriculums are planned based on the age of children.

“If your age doesn’t agree with a particular class, it will be a huge challenge.

“When students are not matured enough for a particular class or old enough for university, they become overwhelmed by the activities.

“Coping with academics becomes a challenge for them and it affects the general development of the society.

“Even when they graduate at tender ages and get a job, they tend to behave like children and cannot shoulder responsibilities given to them.

“They find it very difficult to reason and take decisions on their own in work places.”

Okwori stressed that parents should seek advice from educational professionals with regards to the right age of a child in a particular class before enrolling their wards.

She noted that the curriculum for secondary school students was currently overloaded with 15 subjects in JSS1.

She added that some of the subjects introduced recently such as entrepreneurship, do not have teachers who are well grounded to teach it.

“The education sector has a problem because of curriculum overload. The number of subjects has been increased and they are not taught in details.

“For example, when I started teaching biology, I compared it to what I learnt and realised that the recent syllabus was skeletal.”

She urged policy makers to always conduct a pilot study before implementing any new policy, particularly in the education sector.

She added that Nigeria was not ready for some of the policies such as making Biology an optional subject for senior secondary classes.

She, however, commended the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, for the re-introduction of history subject to the school curriculum.