UNIONS CALL FOR REVIEW OF 6 - 3-3- 4 SYSTEM OF EDUCATION

Two organized groups in the education sector on Monday in Lagos called for a review of the old 6-3-3-4 system of education as a step towards removing the dichotomy among tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

The group, the Nigeria Union of Teachers and All Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools, said that government should also review teachers’ salary scale.

They said that a review of the 6-3-3-4 curriculum should be tailored to encourage patronage of colleges of education by admission seeking youths.

The Chairman of NUT Lagos Wing, Mr Adesegun Raheem, said that a special salary scale for teachers would attract people to want to go into the teaching profession.

Consequently, he said, more students would be willing to go into colleges of education.

According to the unionist, the passion for a profession, especially teaching, may be influenced by the economic gain attached to it.

He said, “The best way to attract more people to the teaching profession is to make the job attractive.

“Give teachers a special salary scale and see how students would be running into teaching.

“Everybody nowadays is concern about the economic benefits attached to his or job and this determines his or her attitude to the work.

“Give special salaries to teachers and see how the best of the brains will be attracted into teaching.

“It is not how many colleges of education we have that matters, but how equipped they are that is most important.”

In another interview, the National President, All Confederation of Principals of Secondary Schools, Mr Anslem Izuagie, called for a reversion to the 6-3-3-4 policy, which was initially introduced in 1982.

Izuagie said that the 6-3-3-4 was the solution to education’s challenges.

He noted that when an aspect of the educational policy was disregarded in preference to another, “one should expect a loop-sided effect in the sector’’.

The national president pointed out that every area of education was important in the development of the country and that as such, the government should go back to the 6-3-3-4 system.

He said, “Let the government review and reshape the system properly; shape it so that people will take joy in what they do.

“It is not everybody that wants to be an academia but get the knowledge and the skill of your desired trade and go and establish yourself.

“That is what the government should do.”

NAN