Prof. Bidemi Lafiaji-Okuneye, Provost of Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOED) has called for adequate investment and structural change in teachers’ education in the country.
Lafiaji-Okuneye made the call at the 2020/2021 matriculation for full-time NCE students of the college on Wednesday in Lagos.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that about 1,000 students were matriculated at the event.
She said that more investment would solve some of the short-term setbacks in the education system.
“To us in this college, we are privileged to have discovered the enormous potential innovations for teacher education’s that are dormant in the system.
“We do not only scale innovations from the margin to the centre of the teacher education system but also source, support and sustain those innovations.
“The innovations address inequality and provides young people with the skills to build a better future for themselves and their communities.
“We set forth a leapfrog pathway, laying out a map to harness education innovations to quickly close the gap in education inequality,’’ Lafiaji-Okuneye said.
According to her, the education innovations adopted were pedagogical approaches alongside direct instruction to help young people analyse and be creative.
“We initiate new ways of recognising learning through traditional teaching and measures.
“We also leverage on a diversity of people and professional teaching to help support learning.
“In the same manner, we adopt smart use of technology and data that allow for real-time adaptation without necessarily replacing analogue approaches,’’ NAN quotes the Provost as saying.
She further remarked that education was not only a fundamental human right but that “it is also an enabling right with the direct impact on the realisation of all other human rights’’.
“Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was already facing challenges of fulfilling the promise of education as a basic human right.
“Issues of the threat of the pandemic to the existence of humanity and education cannot be over flogged.
“Teaching is one of the sustainable jobs during the COVID-19 pandemic,’’ she said.
She advised the matriculating students to attend classes punctually, using the state of the art digital library and other facilities provided by the college.
“Keep to the official promises of loyalty, good conduct and behaviour by not involving in examination malpractices,’’ Lafiaji-Okuneye said. (NAN)
