Federal Colleges of Education’ll commence degree programmes by 2024/2025 academic session– NCCE

Blessing Taiwo

The National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) has asserted that federal colleges of education will begin specialised degree programmes by 2024/2025 academic session.

According to the commission, the degree certificates issued by the colleges of education will not be inferior to that of the universities as the programmes will be supervised by the National Universities Commission (NUC).

In an exclusive interview with Daily Champion, the Executive Secretary of NCCE, Prof. Chijioke Okwelle stated that with the new development, NCE holders will obtain a degree within two years.

Prof. Okwelle noted that the names of the colleges won’t be changed as it commences the degree programmes.

Speaking on public apathy to teaching profession, the erudite professor said the new initiative was introduced to encourage more people to embrace the profession, saying best brains are needed to teach the future leaders.

He said, “the colleges of education have been experiencing low enrollment. Most people don’t want to go to college of education for several factors. But the facilities and manpower in these facilities cannot be allowed to waste hence the need for them to run degree.

“From 2024/2025 academic session, these colleges will run specialised degree programmes in tandem with the NCE programme. With this new directive, a person with NCE will obtain a degree certificate within two years.

“The ministry of education approved this for qualified federal colleges of education because NUC will carry out accreditation of the colleges. It is starting with the federal colleges after which state colleges could come in.

“Currently, colleges run degree programmes with affiliation with universities but there is no point going through the middle man because they have the capacity, facilities and teaching staff to run it. Through the affiliation, the colleges do virtually everything.”

Prof. Okwelle stressed that the degree programmes of the colleges of education will produce more qualified teachers in technical and specialised subjects.

His words, “the degrees that will be run in the colleges are in specialised areas of teaching. Not B.ed in sociology of education, philosophy of education nor educational management but core teaching courses.

“Also, why we opted for degree— we found out that in our senior secondary schools, we lack teachers to teach some specialised courses like technical areas because in the university, these are not handled properly. We want to tailor the system to produce teachers that can teach those specialised technical subjects in secondary schools and technical colleges.

“Teaching practice is very paramount in the colleges of education but in the university, because they borrow courses from other faculties they don’t spend much time on teaching practice because they cannot wait for them.”

The NCCE executive secretary explained that the degree programme will be run with a well planned and flexible curriculum to produce grounded teachers.

“We review our curriculum every five years. We reviewed it in 2020 and we are due for another review. We are starting the process against 2025. We will work on the curriculum to tally with the federal ministry of education framework policy that every child must have technology components in his training right from primary school.

“We are doing a holistic review to ensure that the teachers we produce have entrepreneurship skills and certification. The government is doing a lot to encourage teaching like the introduction of bursary.

“Most times, in this country, it is when you don’t have admission in other places that you switch to education. Due to this, the best brains are not in education. We need the best brains to teach our children. Government is looking at how to attract the best brains to the teaching profession,” he stated.