Basic schools in Nigeria running British curriculum have called on the British Council to invest more on the training of teachers by focusing on face-to-face training.
The schools, though acknowledged the problem solving capacities of the British Curriculum, but expressed concerns in blending the differences in the Nigerian realities with the content of the UK curriculum.
They also identified a peculiar challenge of cultural and climate difference in the usage of curriculum saying the content needed to reflect the realities in Nigeria.
These observations were made known in Abuja during an interface between the British Council CEO, the UK Delegation On Higher Education Visit to Nigeria, British,Cambridge Assessment International Education and British School Leaders in the country.
Qualified Teachers
According to the Head, Centagon International School, Jerry Okundaye, most of the challenges the schools running British curriculum are facing in Nigeria are local problems, explaining that issue of qualified teachers to teach the Cambridge curriculum is a major challenge.
“We have blended Curriculum, that is the British and Nigeria it has been a bit challenging, but we are fine tuning and blending the two together,” he explained.
When you look at the Nigerian context, we have two seasons; Rainy and dry season while the same subject from the British content tells students that there are four seasons. I’m not raising this because I want British council to change the curriculum they have, but this is one of the challenges we facing in order to make these children understand.
“To make these students properly, you will need to make them travel out of the country to experience the UK Climate,” Okundaye said.
He further spotted the challenge of transiting a passionate teacher to becoming a skilled teacher.
Head Premier International School, Charles Husseini, said the British Council should make it’s teacher training programme more interactive base.
He also called for review in the schedule of the training programmes saying February training diet for teachers in Nigeria is not too comfortable.
“The BC need to focus on face to face teacher training and invest more in this training they need to demonstrate practical steps than reading them.up in theories,” he stated.
Hussein said that the British Curriculum was changing mindset of students towards international acceptable standards.
Students of Premier International present at the interface, said learning with the British curriculum has improved their conceptual and critical thinking.
British Council CEO in Nigeria, Scott McDonald, said the BC has been in partnership with Cambridge schools in Nigeria since 2016 and has collaborated in teachers’ training.
The Head of UK government International Education Champion, Professor Steve Smith, acknowledged the enthusiasm of the Nigerian teachers and said that most of the problems mentioned were not peculiar to Nigeria but currently faced across the world.
“Many of the problems they talked about are problems that schools all over the world ,it’s a central problem with the pandemic, the people were not able to go to school,” Professor said.
Lateefah Ibrahim
