Stakeholders have called for collaboration to urgently address challenges facing the education sector in order to achieve national development.
This was the focus at the 2017 Convergence Summit organised by Educorp World and Centre for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Academy in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Education in Abuja on Tuesday.
The Stakeholders called for collaborative efforts between the public and private sectors in order to intently drive education, especially public education.
Mr Adeyomo Aderinto , an education consultant and Director, Educorp World, while speaking on the sidelines of the event, said that there must be shift from merely talking about the problems to actually addressing them if results must be achieved.
Aderinto added that the education sector needed to be restructured and could only be done by collective effort from both the private and public sectors.
“The challenges are enormous and we all know they exists; so when are we going to roll up our sleeves and shift from the problem area to solution area.
“To keep flogging the problem is a problem in itself.
“The way forward as we have proposed some action that we want governed and citizens to participate, and it will take that collective effort to achieve.
“We need to address all these problems together and collaborate and beginning with restructuring because the sector needs to be restructured.’’
Also speaking the Dr Agodi Alagbe, founder, Centre for Teaching and Learning, CTL, said it was a tragedy that the budgetary allocation for education was 7 per cent as against the 26 per cent recommended by the UNESCO .
Alagbe, however, said there was a need for collaboration from all stakeholders in the public and private sectors to help address the challenges in the education sector.
“ The irony is that people keep talking about the problems; however without dwelling on the negative I think it makes a case for what we are trying to do today.
“ That is a convergence of stakeholders because we cannot depend on government alone.
“we are not going to cut it with 7 per cent, so we need to find other ways to fund what needs to happen in education.’’
She said the objective of the summit was to establish an ongoing partnership with the ministry of education and other key stakeholders to find concrete solutions to address the challenges affecting the education sector.
She said she hoped that the summit would be an ongoing intervention to bring people together, who are willing to commit their time and resources and expertise to solving the problem.
The News Agency of Nigeria(NAN) reports that that the theme for the one day summit is:
“ Driving a New Public Education Initiative for Nigeria’ ’.
The summit was aimed at establishing a framework for Nigeria to address existing and emerging needs in education sector in the country.