Niger Delta
NIDO Germany Urges Education Ministry To Revisit 6-3-3-4 System
The Federal Ministry of Education, Nigeria, has been called upon to revisit the 6-3-3-4 system of education with a view to stopping abuse of ‘vocational studies’.
President of Nigeria In Diaspora Organization (NIDO), Germany, Dr Rosalyn Dressman, made the call recently when she visited the Rivers State Newspaper Corporation.
In a chat with The Tide’s correspondents, the diaspora boss described as waste of public funds the idea of shallowly exposing students to one month vocational training, and expecting result out of it.
“They should allow vocational training to take its full course, not the one month training that is given to students with which they are expected to work. That is a waste of public funds”, she expressed.
Reflecting on her days in the secondary school, Dr Dressman who said she is among the first fruit of the 6-3-3-4 system of education in Nigeria, lauded the system for making her what she is today.
“ I can proudly tell you I can do almost every thing we have done with hand, I can type, write short hand: paint, make dresses, cook all manner of dishes and comfortably put tiles on walls and floors”, she said.
Addressing the reality as it partains to vocational studies in Nigeria’s educational institutions in recent time, Dressman said “ it is not the case any more. No body respects skills, nobody respects vocational learning any more and that part of it is dying”.
She, therefore, called on the Federal Ministry of Education to wake up to its responsibility, log in and do it properly so that young people will benefit from it and the society at large will also benefit from it”.
Recall that the 6-3-3-4 system of education came into effect in Nigeria in 1983 with the primary focus of meeting the educational needs of its citizenry and equipping the youths with sellable skills that would make them to be self-reliant.
Twenty-five years after, a new system of education called the Universal Basic Education (UBE) otherwise known as the 9-3-4 has been re-introduced, whose curriculum is expected to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2020.
Sylvia ThankGod-Amadi