By DAYO ADESULU

Many Nigerians are surprised that the Nine-Year Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) has been reviewed by the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) less than three years after the implementation of the curriculum started nationwide in primary and junior secondary schools.

Not a few have questioned the rationale for this exercise. Many are wondering what new issues came up in the education sector in the last three years to have necessitated a review of the BEC that was nationally and internationally applauded when it was developed.

Many want to know the benefits the revision exercise would bring to the education sector in particular and to the nation’s aspiration of becoming one of the best 20 developed economies by year 2020. The Executive Secretary of the parastatal under the Federal Ministry of Education, Professor Godswill Obioma, in this interview, answers these posers and many more. Excerpts:

What necessitated the review of the Basic Education Curriculum less than three years after its implementation commenced?

You will recall that Mr. President directed, based on the reports of the Presidential Task Team on Education (PTTE) which he set up and participated actively, that the Nine-Year Basic Education Curriculum should be revised in terms of reducing the content overload but not affecting quality.

We will also recall that the Nine-Year Basic Education Curriculum (BEC) had 20 subject listings and we have made known to Nigerians the structure of those listings in the last four years as we are going round advocating and sensitizing the stakeholders, particularly the teachers.

Reports from stakeholders indicate that the students were being overburdened with so many subjects. And in line with global best practice, the maximum subjects in primary school and indeed in junior secondary school, has not gone beyond 10.

As a matter of fact, in the United States of America, the maximum number of subjects at this level ranges between five and six. In Kenya, it’s about seven. In Tanzana, it’s six. In neighbouring Ghana, it’s not more than six. In the Asia Pacific countries – Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, India and so on, the number of subjects being taught to primary school pupils and even the junior secondary school, is at most eight or nine which captures the basic element that lays the basic foundation of knowledge.

And so, Nigeria will like to be part of this global development for best practice, and that led to the revision of the BEC, from 20 subjects to a maximum of 10. But from primaries 1 – 3, the maximum number of subjects to be offered is six and Arabic is the seventh one for those who elect to study Arabic.

French is introduced in primary four. And the entire subjects have been restructured to capture basic elements of knowledge – English Studies, Mathematics, Basic Science and Technology, Cultural and Creative Art, Pre-Vocational study, Religious and National Values, Business Studies and Languages. You could see that at most, it is 10.

But let me also say for the purpose of clarity before I get into the issue of concept formulation for the development of Teachers Guides for the revised Nine – Year BEC, contrary to insinuations and wrong impression that the Federal Government has scrapped the teaching of religion in primary  and junior secondary schools,  the revision has reemphasized the teaching of Islamic Studies and Christian Religious Studies.

They are incorporated properly in the newly revised curriculum. This is a recurring issue because when they see Religion and National Values, the translation is that there is no more teaching of Islamic Studies and Christian Religious Studies.

I will like to use this opportunity to inform Nigerians that because of the emphasis on moral values, integrity, good governance and so forth, the curriculum is to use the teaching of religion to achieve these values. So while pupils are studying Islamic and Christina Religious Studies the emphasis is not just on the physical elements of the religions but al
so how they should impact on their lives and make changes for better living.

The other aspect of the revision exercise is that there is now an emphasis on vocational study. In the existing curriculum, Agriculture and Home Economics are elective subjects. But in the revised curriculum, these two sibjects are being taught as subjects within the platform of pre-vocational study.

By the time every Nigerian child goes through the new programme and comes out of junior secondary school, he or she would have learnt prevocational study through Agriculture and Home Economics. Of course, we know the importance of pre-vocational study.

It is not just studying them but there is entrepreneurship component. You’ll recall that the Asia Pacific countries – China, India and so forth – is based on enterprise spirit and even Britain is now teaching enterprise education. And the impact is all over the world, including neighbouring Ghana.

It’s how to enable our youths to acquire critical skills of entrepreneurial attitude. The newly revised curriculum has captured this. I will like to say also that there is emphasis on it. Of course, you know the essence of knowledge management.

There is emphasis on health, basic science, technology as a building foundation for knowledge. We all know that mathematics is a fundamental discipline of science and technology. There is also a development in English Studies. There is this poor reading culture which we have all noticed but the newly revised curriculum has captured reading as a teachable content to enable our children acquire the culture of reading. Of course you know information is power. So reading will be taught from primaries 1 – 3 and primaries 4, 5 and 6 and junior secondary school.

What is the concept formulation for the development of Teachers Guides all about?

NERDC has revised  the Nine-Year BEC and the curriculum is now being produced. We hope that in the next couple of months it will be distributed nationwide to all schools in the country in preparation for the implementation in September 2013.

And so not just developing the contents, there is a need also to engineer the processes of implementing those contents very effectively. That is why we were in Benin City, Edo State primarily to begin the arduous process of grinding out Teachers’ Guides in each of the 10 subjects and indeed, in each of the teachable areas.

Take for instance Religion and National Value which has Islamic Studies, Christian Studies, Social Studies and  Security Education. There is Teachers’ Guide for each of these components just as there is Teachers’ Guide for Pre-Vocational – one for Agriculture, one for Home Economics. There is Teachers’ Guide for English Studies. There is also the one for lesson plan for teaching Reading.

So were in Benin to lay out a concept plan, to ask ourselves: What will the teachers’ Guides by like? What to be the structure and foundation, what to be the outline in terms of planning, what to be the elements that will be the basis for writing the Teachers’ Guides.

That is why we have these personnel from the Universities who are experts in the contents, who are experts in preparing teachers. We have experts from Colleges of Education who prepare teachers at that level, experienced primary and secondary school teachers.

We have even experts from the French embassy who will help us to articulate the element of how to teach French in the primary school. We also have experts from the industry, we have experts from the Health and Physical Education  industry.

So there is a mix in this grill between academic and teachers’ educators in the universities and those practitioners in the industry. And the last but not the least are my colleagues from the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council who are experts and who also provide the policy upon which these elements could be articulated.

Among them, we have Directors of Research in their various specializations – those in curriculum, those in business, those in mathematics and science and those in finance and business. We were all in Benin to put heads together. The next logical arrangement after the workshop in Benin is to now write the draft, based on the outcome of this conceptual planning workshop.

After that we will now critique the draft to be followed by editing the draft and then we will say to Nigerians here is the curriculum and the Teachers’ Guides. And all these activities have to be completed by December this year. The printing of the revised curriculum is already in process and as soon as we complete the Teachers Guides and print it, it will be distributed side by side with the curriculum and it will be used in training the teachers.

Some components of the Teachers Guides will be used at a preparatory training for pre-service teachers of Engli sh studies and Reading in Colleges of Education. USAID is going to collaborate with NERDC in that venture. God on our side, we have been able to latch onto the transformation agenda of Mr. President.

You will recall that the agenda emphasizes certain critical goals. One is good governance, the second is security and power, the other is health and of course, we have human development. And where we come in all these things we are doing is to be able to drive the development of human beings who will be able to participate and effectively raise Nigeria to the quality of those big players around the globe.

How are teachers going to be motivated in their task of implementing the curriculum?

If we have a good curriculum and it is not implemented effectively by teachers, then it becomes a wasted effort. Let me give some insight into the way we operate at NERDC. We are basically an education content developing institution. We prepare curriculum.

The other thing we do include developing text books, language and research. We develop the contents and we collaborate with other agencies that are in charge of teachers. For instance, the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) that has its tentacles across the country. It is in charge of continuously upgrading teachers. When we revise curriculum, we provide the draft to them to be ingrained into their own programme as part of what they will teach the teachers at that level.

That is why NTI was part of our team that developed the 9 – Year BEC and they also used the curriculum to revise their educational training programme. So the assurance is that we are working in collaboration. We also work in collaboration with the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE).

You will recall that the NCCE is a first class entity of government that regulates teachers’ preparation for primary schools and junior secondary schools. They regulate the activities and operations of Colleges of Education and the commission also worked with us when we revised the BEC a few months ago.

It used the revised curriculum to upgrade the teachers preparation programme. What we do at NERDC after preparing the curriculum is that we carry out national sensitization. In fact, we have concluded all arrangements to carry out national sensitization for teachers and it’s done on the train trainers’ basis.

In other words, state will nominate teachers from primary and junior secondary schools and some officials from State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEB) to get them acquainted with the curriculum, and then sensitize then on the challenges that exist on how to implement the curriculum. This is done for teachers both in public and private schools. This is by way of moving towards effective curriculum implementation.

What gains is the revision expected to bring to Nigeria?

I want to acquaint us with the structure of the Nine – Year Basic Education Curriculum. If you look at the curriculum, it has three levels. We have primaries 1 – 3, primaries 4 – 6 and junior secondary school 1 – 3. That is how the curriculum is structured. We prepared the curriculum in 2006 and began its implementation in 2008 and then got the first set graduated from JSS in 2011.

But along the line, while the implementation was going on, we needed to ask ourselves: what have we done right? What have we done wrong? How have stakeholders taken it? What are the challenges teachers are having? What about the pupils, parents and stakeholders?

Monitoring of the curriculum implementation has thrown up observations and challenges on the curriculum. In addition to this, the president set up a stakeholders form and the issue of the 9 – Year Basic Education programme came up at that meeting. And we were asked to reduce the subject overload.

This directive actually came at the right time, having implemented the curriculum for three years and was already due for a review. That is why we had to revise it and I think we have done the right thing. All over the world, you have to monitor the implementation of curriculum, looking at the strengths and weaknesses and improve upon them.

It is also important to state that three years earlier when the curriculum was first prepared, we didn’t have the kind of challenges we have in the country. There are issues of security problem in some parts of the country, wanton killings in the other parts of the country.

And we are now saying that we want to change this attitude through formal education because we believe, as practitioners, that if we teach security issue and use education to create awareness on security matters, people will be better informed on how to handle themselves, it wasn’t in the curriculum three years ago and so it has now been infused into the curriculum to be taught formally as security education. As we go on in life, issues emerge and as issues emerge, we must ensure that these issues are taken care of. That is why we have done what we did concerning the review.