The
retired director of National Accreditation and Quality Assurance Authority
(NAQAA), Edrissa M.L. Colley has argued that the national education curriculum
embeds technical trade areas in school curriculum to allow students to choose
their prioritised professions at an early stage.
He
made this statement in an interview with The Point over the weekend during a
daylong career counseling guidance in Banjulinding, Kombo North District for
over 30 youths. It was organised by Ding Ding Wiriya Federation of Child Fund
The Gambia.
He
argued that the inclusion of different technical and skill trade areas in the
national education curriculum will greatly assist in allowing the young people
and school graduates to make informed decisions of choosing their life time
profession, while pointing out that the limitation to only few academic
subjects in the school curriculums has created lot of challenges to many young
graduates in career development.
He
added that the idea of core subjects and non-core subjects in the school
educational curriculum has hugely hampered a lot of progress that should have
been made in the technical areas of the country toward national development as
many school graduates were only introduced and made to believe in white-collar
professional jobs, while leaving the economic technical skill trade area
dormant.
“What
we should do as a nation is to prepare our high school graduates in order to
wisely choose their prioritised skill areas and allow them with employment
chances is to improve on our National education curriculum by including various
technical subjects. If students are given chance to learn various technical
skill areas as subjects in their 8 or 9 grades can give them the clear view of
what career they will chose after their graduation as not all can be successful
in terms academic performance,” he said.