The creation of a “smart” curriculum for bilingual education in Nigeria has begun thanks to the efforts of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) and important stakeholders.
Mr. David Apeh, Head of Public Relations and Protocol at the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), revealed in a statement released on Monday in Abuja that the commission had just conducted a workshop for curriculum adaptation for bilingual schools, wherein experts engaged in brainstorming sessions to devise the optimal curriculum for the distinct schools.
According to him, a consistent method to developing the bilingual education curriculum has been advocated for by Professor Bala Zakari, Deputy Executive Secretary (Technical) of UBEC and Project Supervisor for the Bilingual Education Program in Nigeria.
From the building of the schools in the nine focal states to the involvement of specialists in a number of programs, Zakari stated that UBEC is working to assure the success of the bilingual education program.
With over seven million students enrolled in Early Childhood Care and Development Education (ECCDE) alone and over 47 million in elementary school, he claimed that Nigeria is extremely special considering the peculiarities of the country’s population.
The workshop aimed to analyze the current national curriculum, including the Tsangaya, and determine how it could be modified to align with the bilingual education program, according to Mansir Idris, Project Coordinator at the Islamic Development Bank.
Additionally, Dr. Ibrahim Bakari, Head of Unit for ICT at UBEC, pointed out that the national curriculum lacked some topics, particularly in robotics, coding, and artificial intelligence. He suggested that these be covered in the new curriculum designed for bilingual education.
He promoted a “smart” bilingual education curriculum that adheres to international best practices in terms of efficacy and efficiency.
In the meantime, a multi-year financing facility program of $98 million was approved by the Islamic Development Bank’s (IsDB) Board of Executive Directors in 2012 to support bilingual education in Nigeria.
The project’s objectives were to guarantee inclusive education, advance bilingual education, and help Nigeria’s socioeconomic situation.
As per the commission’s report, the states that stand to gain include Adamawa, Borno, Gombe, Kaduna, Kano, Kwara, Nasarawa, Niger, and Osun.
According to UBEC, the project’s main goals are to expand access to basic education, raise the standard of instruction, and strengthen administrators’ managerial abilities.
The project’s goals include increasing enrollment and lowering the out-of-school-children syndrome, among other things, by building 30 bilingual education boarding schools in the states that will benefit.