The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu has called on Africa and the global community to strive towards continuous skill development for teachers and learners to address interconnected global challenges including climate change, loss of biodiversity, unsustainable use of resources, and inequality.
Adamu spoke yesterday at the 61st UN commission For Social Development side event on “Learning and Working for change,” an event organised in collaboration with Global NGO Executive Committee in New York.
In his opening remarks, commended the African Youth Movement for the new frontiers they keep pushing to empower Africans to work towards a better world through various interactive and inclusive means.
He said our educational system is undergoing a learning curve to acclimatise to the change brought about by the pandemic, since the topic under consideration; Learning for Change is apt.
“This way, we are truly learning for change developing strategies at all levels for stakeholder engagement in the education sector, and building partnerships that will give learners of all ages the knowledge, skills, values and agency.
“As the organisers must have assumed, creating full and productive employment and decent work for all as a way of overcoming inequalities require that we have to start doing things differently.
“We are all aware, and even living with, of the monumental change in the education system brought about by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of our Teachers were locked out of school and our children could not access school because of the closures.
“School closures forced changes in teaching and learning and leap-frogged the leveraging of digital technology in education.
“This helped to continue teaching and learning by down-playing the pre-pandemic reliance on traditional classroom/physical contact method of teaching and learning from basic education levels to the tertiary level.
“On our part, the lessons learnt have repositioned our educational system on a more productive pathway towards achieving our sector goals through the use of infrastructure, technology and connectivity to increase access and diversity to education,” he said.
The Minister further said the collective resolve to shift from classroom learning and the willingness to experiment with diverse learning platforms such as radio, television, digital lesson production and community-based learning hubs is a testament of the resilience of the education sector to adapt to change.
“Learning requires effort complemented by the requisite infrastructure, several Information and Communication Technology for Education (ICT4E) projects driven by the Federal Ministry of Education (FME) and supported by donor partners and EdTech initiatives seeking to implement technology in education in order to combat equity, access and inclusion have been deployed in Nigeria.
“The Nigeria Learning Passport (NLP), our flagship open education resource center was launched last year to provide an online, mobile and offline platform for continuous access to quality education amongst others.”
He maintained that an off-site learning is still work in progress, saying that it requires a lot of work in the aspect of infrastructural development and partnerships to drive the change we seek.
“Going forward, our commitment is to steer the course that these innovations have brought to our doorstep and tap into the innumerable benefits derivable in the exposure that education sector has witnessed through these changes.
“Our policy priorities align with the global goals of education for sustainable development. We are confident that these innovative platforms for learning will improve the quality of education for the sector to meet international standards, prioritize skills development to equip Nigerians with the right competencies for employability through investments in key programs and skills, improve digital literacy proficiency to drive innovation, competitiveness and unlock the growth potential of various sectors, as well as use technology to expand the reach and impact of gender programming and social mobilization campaigns,” the Minister added.
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