FUK Faculty holds maiden national conference on education
The Faculty of Education, Federal University of Kashere, on Tuesday, held its first National Conference on Education to strategize towards addressing contemporary challenges of education practice.
The event which was held at FUK was graced by eminent scholars in the field of education from different institutions as Prof. Ibrahim Dantani Wushishi, the registrar and chief executive officer of National Examinations Council (NECO) also delivered a lecture.
The theme of the conference is “Emerging Innovations for Curtailing Contemporary Challenges and Issues in Education Practice”.
In his opening remarks, the chairman of the event and Vice-Chancellor of the University, Prof Umar Pate said the conference was a veritable tool to share experiences and ideas.
Pate stated that the conference would help make “functional, prescriptive and solution-oriented recommendations” that could be utilised by policy makers and interested parties to effect positive change in the country.
Pate stated that the institution was working hard to train its students on the right morals to contribute to national development.
He added that FUK had always insisted on ethics, values and standards that are acceptable Internationally to ensure that students of the institution remained good ambassadors wherever they go.
He called on students and all stakeholders to embrace Information and Communications Technology (ICT) towards addressing some of the emerging challenges encountered in education sector.
Pate hinted that the institution was already discussing with National University Commission (NUC) to run part-time courses in education.
On his part, Prof Wushishi who is the Lead Paper Presenter for the occasion harped on the need to use education to effect positive change in the society.
He called on stakeholders in the education sector to prioritize moral education to address some of the societal challenges bedevilling the nation.
He stated that for education to be useful and impactful on the society, there was the need for stakeholders to prioritize morals towards ensuring the development of the country.
He described education as a tool that must be gainfully utilised to produce manpower with the requisite knowledge, skills and competencies needed to drive the country’s quest for sustainable development and increased national prosperity.
According to him, education is at the heart of all national development efforts, hence, the need to leverage it to proffer solutions to the challenges of the country.
He stated that education that adds no value to the society was no education, adding that moral education was needed to address the behavioural ills that some individuals exhibit to cause mayhem in the society.
“We all must help develop individuals with sound morals because it is now a challenge to education.
“In recent times, we now have educated people as kidnappers, criminals and internet fraudsters because they lacked the needed moral values to be patriotic and contribute positively to national development.”
While identifying malpractice as a challenge that needed to be addressed, Wushishi stated that NECO under his watch was already leveraging modern technologies towards curbing examination malpractice.
He expressed his concern over some parents’ involvement in encouraging their children to engage in examination malpractice, stressing that such attitudes would not encourage the child to do the right thing.
According to him, NECO would continue to go tough on all forms of examination malpractice and ensure that the moral integrity of the body was upheld for the benefit of national development.
Earlier, Prof Auwal Abdulhamid, the Dean of the faculty said with the reality of COVID-19, it was clear that education sector now faces a new kind of challenge.
“So we are having this conference bearing in mind how COVID-19 shutdown the education system worldwide, so th system worldwide, so the conference will help us strategies on how to teach our students under whatever circumstances and situation.
The Dean appreciated all the stakeholders within and outside the institution for making the conference a success.
The keynote address was presented by Prof Adepoju Adedimeji who challenged education stakeholders to harness the huge potentials in ICT to proffer solutions to challenges in the sector.
According to Adedimeji, the survival of the sector depends on how well modern ways especially ICT is leveraged in addressing contemporary issues in education sector.
