British schools task council training teachers

Some schools using the British curriculum have called on the British Council to invest more on teachers' training programmes that will focus on face-to-face teaching.

The schools made the call in Abuja on Tuesday during an interface with the British Council CEO, Mr Scott McDonald, the UK Delegation on Higher Education visit to Nigeria and British, Cambridge Assessment International Education.

The schools though acknowledged problem solving capacities of the British Curriculum, but expressed concern over blending the differences in the Nigerian realities with the content of the UK curriculum.

They also identified peculiar challenges of cultural and climate difference in teaching the students..

The Head, Centagon International School, Mr Jerry Okundaye, described the challenges the schools running British curriculum were facing as local, adding that issue of qualified teachers to teach the Cambridge curriculum was also a major challenge.

"We have blended curriculum, that is the British and Nigeria and it has been a little challenging but we are fine tuning our hands on it.

" In blending the two together, I just mentioned that in Geography, when you look at the Nigerian content you have two seasons- rainy and dry season and the same subject from the British content will tell the students you have four seasons.

" I am not raising this because I want British council to change the curriculum they have but this is one of the challenges we face.

" In order to make these children understand , you will need to make the them travel out of the country to experience the UK Climate, so that is all that I raised, he said.

Okundaye further spotted the challenge of transiting a passionate teacher to becoming a skilled teacher.

Also, Head, Premier International School, Mr Charles Husseini, said the British Council should make its teacher training programme more interactive.

Husseini called for the review in the schedule of the training programmes in February training diet for teachers, saying that the time was not too comfortable as most teachers do not have the opportunities to take part in the training.

"The British Curriculum needs to focus on face- to-face teacher training and invest more in this training because there is need to demonstrate practical steps than reading them up in theories.

" The British Curriculum is changing the mindset of students toward international acceptable standards," he said.

Meanwhile, the students of Premier International present at the interface, said that learning with the British curriculum had improved their conceptual and critical thinking in solving problems and especially in the ICT.

Also, the British Council Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in Nigeria, Mr Scott McDonald, said the council had been in partnership with Cambridge schools in Nigeria since 2016 and had collaborated in teacher training.

In the same vein, Prof. Steve Smith, Head of UK Government International Education Champion, acknowledged the enthusiasm of the Nigerian teachers while saying that most of the problems mentioned were not only peculiar to Nigeria.

" Many of the problems they talked about are problems that schools all over the world also face, it is a central problem with the pandemic because the people were not able to go to school," Smith said.