Revised national curriculum is apt, but …

Following the completion of a review of the senior secondary national curriculum, the federal government, after releasing the approved subject offerings at both the basic and senior secondary levels, also said the implementation of the new document will come into being immediately. Indeed, the review is long overdue. A school curriculum is expected to be […]

Following the completion of a review of the senior secondary national curriculum, the federal government, after releasing the approved subject offerings at both the basic and senior secondary levels, also said the implementation of the new document will come into being immediately.

Indeed, the review is long overdue. A school curriculum is expected to be subjected to a review by experts after every five years of implementation with a view to updating its contents to align with global trends. The existing senior secondary curriculum, which came into being in 2012, has been in use for the past 13 years.

It would be recalled that the federal government had last year unveiled the revised edition of the basic education curriculum. The then Minister of Education, Prof Tahir Mamman said the revised basic education curriculum was designed to incorporate knowledge, skills and values in learners at this level of the system.  The revised national curriculum for basic and senior secondary schools is, therefore, apt and commendable.

In a press statement issued on Monday, September 8, 2025, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), Professor Salisu Shehu, said the implementation of the revised national curriculum will begin with the new academic session at the start of each 3-year education circle (Primary 1, Primary 4, JSS1, and SS1). The NERDC further assured that the new reforms mark a new phase in Nigeria’s education sector, ensuring relevance, flexibility, and skill acquisition from the earliest stages of learning.

The recently revised senior secondary curriculum for Nigerian schools, too, has its innovative components that make it a globally competitive document. Some of the innovative features of the revised edition of the senior secondary curriculum include a deliberate focus on learning outcomes that align with the general goals of the curriculum. In addition, the revised curriculum is competency and activity-based, gender sensitive, interdisciplinary, culture-friendly, ICT-driven, and 21st century skills compliant.

The competency framework of the revised curriculum contents is built on ICT competences, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, research and problem-solving, leadership and collaboration. Similarly, the learning assessment framework, which is about evidence of learning as deployed in the revised national curriculum, is a departure of what evaluation of learning experiences used to be.

For each school subject in the revised curriculum, the content-loading of knowledge takes between 70 and 80 per cent. While emerging issues such as climate change, digital technology, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are allocated between 15 and 10 per cent, cross-cutting contents that comprise soft skills in the form of values and morals take between 15 and 10 per cent, too. The soft skills contents include patriotism, integrity, hard work, punctuality, honesty, respect for others, contentment, patience, and rule of law.

Beyond the global best practices’ compliant features of the revised curriculum for basic and senior secondary schools is the practical need of critical infrastructure required to make the curriculum functional. The lack of necessary requirements to execute the old curriculum was part of its implementation failures. As a national document, the curriculum is to be implemented in all schools at all levels, including those cited in rural communities where power supply is, most often, unavailable.

How then is government thinking of implementing the digital and AI components of the revised curriculum on learners who probably have never seen a desktop computer let alone interact with it? In many public schools today, only the principal has a desktop, which may not be functional. Yet, government is talking of a curriculum that would equip students with 21st century skills.

Although developers of the revised curriculum would state that ideal curriculum contents do not have to wait for ideal infrastructural situations before they are developed, it’s relevant to quickly add that though it is good to be ambitious, ambitions can only be reasonable to the extent of how realistic they seem and how genuinely they are pursued. We shouldn’t replace failed curriculum content with a revised one designed to also fail due to infrastructural and human resource gaps. For instance, the skills acquisition component of the National Policy of Education as captured in Section 22(a) of the policy document failed to actualise because necessary tools for imparting vocational skills in learners were never provided.

No matter how apt and beautiful a revised curriculum contents appear, its implementation remains a huge task if government fails in its fundamental commitment to the cause of workshop tools and learning equipment at the basic and senior secondary schools respectively. One practical way to make the revised curriculum to work is by averting a repeat of the past failures experienced in the implementation of the old one.

Daily Trust calls on the state and local governments in the country both of which own the greater percentage of basic and senior secondary schools in Nigeria to equip schools with all they need in terms of infrastructure and human resource for the successful implementation of the revised national curriculum.