Senate President makes call for a review of the curriculum for Colleges of Education to make them more viable and to attract enrollment of more students
President of the Senate, Ahmad Lawan has urged relevant authorities to consider a review of the curriculum in the Colleges of Education to attract more enrollment.
Lawan gave the advice on Wednesday in Abuja when he received the Committee of Chairmen of Federal Colleges of Education who paid him a visit.
Chairman of the Committee, Abdulmalik Mahmood in speaking to the Senate President highlighted dwindling enrollment and inadequate funding amongst other challenges facing Colleges of Education in the country.
The former Bauchi Deputy Governor further urged the Senate President to assist in ensuring that the Amendment Act establishing the Federal Colleges of Education becomes a reality.
In his response, the Senate President said: “Government, of course, when it creates Institutions, is supposed to provide for them. I imagine that no government will create Institutions with the intention of depriving them of attention or resources.
I’m sure, sometimes, government gets into a situation where the resources may simply not be sufficient to go round and therefore everywhere will be like everybody should have something to survive.
That places some burden on the Institutions because it means the Institutions must have to be creative and innovative in their internally generated revenues.
But I understand that even to generate revenues, you have people who will be there in the colleges, and if you have dwindling enrollment situations, that makes it worse because it means you cannot have much from the students who will be enrolled, and that leaves the institutions, especially the colleges of education in a very challenging situation.
He explained the role of parliament in ensuring that the colleges of education get the right attention and appropriate resources to effectively run their affairs while urging them to engage better with the legislative committees before and during budget presentations.
“We will try to see how our colleges of education will attract students because when you go through the priority scale, most of our youths will indicate a preference for University…That explains why the enrollment situation in colleges of education is bad because it’s usually the last resort.
We should have our colleges of education becoming top choice for our students.
If we have to reverse the present trend, it means we have to review even what we teach in most of our institutions…The Colleges of Education can produce fantastic, not only teachers but researchers as well and that can make them contribute very meaningfully to the development of the country,” he added.