Faulty curriculum bane of unemployment in Nigeria, says Lagos Govt

LASUBEB

Lagos State Government has said that there is high unemployment in Nigeria because of the country’s faulty school curriculum.

It added that many youths were unemployed because they do not have the required skills to take up the available jobs, saying there is a need to revisit the curriculum to meet the market needs.

Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Folashade Adefisayo, represented by the Director, Basic Education Services, Lagos State Ministry of Education, Mr. Adeyemi Adebayo, said this, at the weekend, during the official Close-Out of the Universal Basic Education Fund Tracking (UBEFT) Project and public launch of the project report in Lagos by Human Development Initiatives (HDI).

Adefisayo said as part of efforts aimed at making the curriculum work better for students in the state, the state government is establishing comprehensive model school project where every child needs to learn a skill.

Meanwhile, in its report presented at the event, the HDI said that it had successfully tracked projects worth N3.49 billion executed by the Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB) in 11 local councils.

Executive Director, HDI, Mrs. Olufunso Owasanoye, said that her organisation was able to track the projects through the support of MacArthur Foundation, and its field monitors in the 11 local councils.

Owasanoye explained that the UBEFT project, which officially kicked off in 2017, had been a very impactful one with series of activities and successes.

Relatedly, Lagos State government through the Office of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) has signed a concession agreement for the development of Lagos Medical Park (Medi Park).

Special Adviser to the Governor on PPP, Mr. Ope George, who disclosed this in a statement, said that the MediPark project was a partnership between the Lagos State government and IASO Consortium.

He said that the proposed MediPark is a 120-bed tertiary facility built on 1.76 hectares of land on Awolowo Road, Ikoyi (Former School of Nursing). Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board (LASUBEB) has introduced the Let’s Mark App for EKOEXCEL programme.

In a statement, yesterday, LASUBEB Chairman, Wahab Alawiye-King, said that introduction of the App would further position the state public primary schools as leaders in transformative education reform through the use of technology.

He added that this would enable widespread acceptance of EKOEXCEL among all stakeholders within the Lagos State political class, including the end users of the programme.

Alawiye-King said the app would allow teachers to quickly and accurately mark multiple-choice examinations using the school leader smartphone.

“The teacher uses the app to ‘scan’ the answer sheet. The app, in turn, automatically marks all responses and identifies incorrect responses. The teacher then marks the incorrect answers on the paper.

“The app also uploads all item-level data to remote servers. Let’s Mark can also be used with thermal printers. Thermal printers are small battery-powered printers that print the results of an exam for each individual student. The printout includes the student details, the answers to all questions the student answered incorrectly, and a QR code that links to either the exam PDF or to the mobile quizzing platform,” he said.

Alawiye-King hinted that the App was introduced as a pilot phase to 200 select Lagos state public primary schools prior to the end-of-term examinations, where the teachers underwent a week long capacity building exercise on how to use the App, facilitated by LASUBEB’s BEQA Mentoring Field Officers.

“Furthermore, as part of the pilot phase, the Let’s Mark is only applicable to Supplementary Mathematics (Numeracy Levels C-E) examinations. Other syllabus subjects will be introduced in the near future.”

Head Teacher of Federal Housing Estate Primary School Victoria Island Lagos, Mrs. Francisca Okafo, commended the introduction of the Let’s Mark App.
“The Let’s Mark App is a very commendable one, it will ease the stress of going through exam scripts to mark one after the other. Though it took us some time to understand the conditions to accurately scan the exam scripts but as we got through, the process went smoothly. So I want to encourag Let’s Mark App is introduced to all Lagos State public primary schools in marking examinations.”

A basic 4 teacher at Ansar-Ud-Deen primary school, Victoria island Lagos, Mr. Bakare Yusuf, said with the introduction of technology, the teacher’s job would be easier.

“You scan and it automatically brings out the result and score for you. There is no need to bring out your biro to mark severally and that takes all of your time.”