NERDC to train 140 out of school youths in North Central

The Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) has said it will train 140 out of school youths from the six North Central states and Abuja in entrepreneurship skills to enable them set up businesses on their own.

Prof Godswill Obioma, Executive Secretary of the council said this in Minna while flagging off the monitoring of the implementation and distribution of the new Senior Secondary School education curriculum and nine year basic education curriculum.

According to him "My council will in the next one month flag off training of 140 out of school youths in entrepreneurship skills to enable them gain functional knowledge of empowerment and also assist them set up small scale businesses’’.

He said that the MDGs provided funds for the training but did not disclose the amount involved, adding that the exercise scheduled for a date to be fixed in May 2013 in Minna would last for eight weeks.

The Executive Secretary said that during the training the council would pay the trainers, accommodate and feed the trainees and also provide them with facilities and equipment to commence business after training.

He said that the youths would be trained on GSM repairs, making of garment, hair dressing and making of paints.

Obioma said though the responsibility of the senior secondary school education rests with the state governments because of mass failure in WAEC and NECO the Federal Government directed NERDC to print the old and new edition of the curriculum and deliver them to all the state ministries of education for onward distribution to their schools.

"After this flag-off we hope that this curriculum will be passed on to your public schools to enable students prepare properly for WAEC and NECO examinations’’, he said.

Furthermore, he said that the flag-off which was going on simultaneously in the 36 states of the federation and Abuja would enable primary school pupils and secondary school students choose subjects that would bring about human capital development in the country.

The Executive Secretary added that the new senior secondary school curriculum which would commence in June 2013 would examine students in four compulsory subjects of English, mathematics, civic education and trade to enable them to be useful in their field of endeavour and be vast in other fields. 

Also speaking, Alhaji Saidu N. Idris, Secretary to Niger Government said that the state government accorded its education sector priority because no meaningful development would take place without educating the people.

"We inherited a situation where we had average of 70, 000 pupils being enrolled in schools but with the coming of this administration we have enrolled over 1.3 million pupils’’, he noted.

He pledged to ensure that the council is reallocated with another office accommodation or land in Minna as the one first allocated to it has been affected by construction of road.

Source-Daily Times