Nigeria Certificate in Education Programme: The Need for Restructuring
Keywords:
teaching, Colleges of Education, National Policy on Education, Nigeria Certificate in EducationAbstract
The NCE programme was created in line with the Ashby Report on Education in 1959, which emphasized the need for the training of middle level manpower for our educational institutions. Initially, granduands from Colleges of Education, that is to say, NCE holders were employed to teach in secondary schools (both junior and senior secondary), but with the abolition of Teachers’ Training Colleges (who hitherto produced teachers for primary schools), NCE holders were thus redirected to teach mainly in the Basic Education years (primary and junior secondary schools). A close look at most of the programmes run in Colleges of Education shows that these Courses or Programmes are not restructured to meet the new academic needs and demands of pupils in primary schools and students in junior secondary schools. NCE students are still trained as if they are to teach in both junior and senior secondary schools. Thus, this work is primarily concerned with the need to restructure the programme in the Nigeria Certificate in Education to enable it serve the present need for which it meant to meet. It is on this premise that this study advocates that curriculum experts and National Commission for Colleges of Education should urgently restructure NCE programmes, (not only in Federal Colleges of Education), to address its present status and to meet the needs of the society.
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