Executive secretary (ES) of the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE), Prof. Idris Bugaje, has called for re-engineering and reinvention of technical colleges across the country in order to boost polytechnic education and increase skills acquisition among Nigerian youths.
Bugaje said it was worrisome that technical colleges that were supposed to serve as major sources of admission for polytechnics in the country, were being abandoned with all the machinery rotting away.
The NBTE boss spoke on Wednesday at the “Review of 10 National Technical Certificates (NTC) and Advance National Technical Certificates (ANTC) Curricular Workshop” in Kaduna.
He said, “Technical colleges and technical teachers training are required so that we can reinvent and re-engineer the technical colleges.
“Our polytechnics in Nigeria are supposed to admit students from technical colleges, but because the admission to technical colleges is so low, less than one percent of 123 technical schools out of over 15,000 secondary schools. The population is less than the average secondary school.
“We will not go anywhere if we do not re-engineer and reinvent the technical college. One way of doing that is in the curriculum which you are already doing, but most important we need to put in the correct infrastructure, we need to improve the environment. We need to kill this broken window syndrome- once you go to a technical college, the gate is broken, the windows are broken, the machines are dilapidated… that has to change,” he said.
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