Tunji Alausa, Minister of Education, has explained the recent policy shift, which is the Federal Government’s dual-mandate programme in the colleges of education, news.ng reports.
Alausa, in an interview on Channels Television on Tuesday evening, said the policy is aimed at strengthening teacher training, improving institutional sustainability, and expanding access to university degrees.
According to the Minister, the initiative allows students to enrol in colleges of education to secure both the National Certificate in Education (NCE) and a Bachelor of Education within a space of five years through a single admission process.
“Last year alone, dual-mandate colleges of education and all federal colleges of education today, most of them, except the ones that were founded five years and below, now offer dual-mandate degrees,” he said.
“Students will now go, they’ll enter as an NCE, they’ll do three years. After three years, if they meet the requirement to go to universities, which is five credits, they’ll continue and do another two years and get two degrees.”
He added that the reform has enhanced colleges of education, which were declining in terms of enrolment, noting that there has been an overwhelming response from the states.
“That has really now put a college of education into sustainability for the future. That’s now. So, we’ve had more traction of students going.
“We need a better pool of more teachers, high-quality teachers. So, we’ve sorted that out, and we’ve seen a significant number of people going. So, about 28 federal colleges of education have started that.
“For the state colleges of education, they now have to change their individual state legislation to make that happen. I think at the last count, we have almost 18 states or 17 states that have done that,” he added.
According to the Minister, the reform has simplified the process of securing admission into the NCE and universities, which previously mandated separate Direct Entry (DE) processes for the two programmes.
“Before, once you have the NCE, you can now go to university as Direct Entry to do three years. But we’ve minimised it now. You just now do one single entry,” he explained.
