Three nongovernmental organisations are working together to train teachers in low cost schools on Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM).
The organisations are Carisma4U Educational Foundation, Bunmi Adedayo Foundation (BAF) and the Sustainable Education and Enterprises Development (SEED).
Together, they initiated on a teacher training project tagged STEM Teachers Advocacy Readiness Training (START) held on 1st December, 2018.
Executive Director of Carisma4U, Adetola Salau told EduCeleb.com that the partner organisations were working towards ensuring that teachers were equipped to prepare their students for the 21st century.
“Carisma4U, Bunmi Adedayo Foundation and SEED are partnering to ensure that teachers all over Lagos as well as SEED’s network of teachers in its 700+ low cost Private schools across Lagos are equipped to bolster their children for the 21stt century,” she said.
The organisers of the START project hope to create “future readiness trainings” for 5,000 teachers who work across Lagos schools by the end of 2019.
“The labour industry is rapidly transforming and perpetually dynamic with a strong leaning towards STEM. Yet, studies have shown that Africa will have a great number of unemployed youth in the next 15 to 30 years if skills aren’t taught today to prevent that from happening.”
“We aim to empower and equip the teachers with STEM and entrepreneurship content that will offer them the capacity to engage their students’ future readiness,” Ms Salau added.
She noted that in the past, teachers used to prepare students for a job that could last for their whole lives. These determined whether they became engineers, doctors, nurses, teachers or other professionals.
But things have rapidly changed with the advent of robotics, artificial intelligence and other innovations sure to come up for which Salau must be ready to embrace.
“Classroom teachers’ functions must change in the global economy that we find ourselves a part of. Teachers are the most fundamental part of learning for our students,” she said.
“We need to work on ensuring that we have great teachers in every classroom to meet the challenges of getting our students future ready.”
EduCeleb.com reports that Carisma4U is a social innovation enterprise that transforms learning to be more relevant and focuses on getting our children future ready- able to compete globally using STEM education.
The BAF website describes it as a non-profit working towards improving the lives of children from disadvantaged background but more importantly to “strengthen the quality of education and its delivery in public schools in Nigeria.”
SEED, an initiative of W-Holistic Business Solutions seeks to “affect the future incomes and livelihoods of today’s school-aged children through a wholistic and inclusive model which impacts major stakeholders in the education ecosystem.”