Osinbajo Seeks Review Of WAEC Curriculum

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has asked that the curriculum of the West African Secondary School Certificate (WAEC) be urgently reviewed due to the current challenges in global development.

Osinbajo said this on Tuesday while opening the 70th annual council meeting of WAEC in Abuja.

He encouraged the body to embrace the teaching and learning methods of Cambridge International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE), explaining that while IGCSE integrates the education of critical thinking, core skills, creativity, collaboration, imagination, and problem-solving skills, WAEC promotes one-way learning.

“So, it seems to me that in the next few years, the WAEC curriculum and examinations and the teaching must be designed to test for and support these four skills.

“Of course, with the successes WAEC has demonstrated in the past 70 years, they are adaptive to innovation, and this shouldn’t pose a problem at all.

“This is the Africa WAEC should prepare our children for; an Africa that would need world-class young people who have strong interpersonal, innovative, entrepreneurial, critical, and creative thinking skills, among others,” Osinbajo said.

He however praised the examination body for its implementation of technological innovations including biometric verification, online registration, computer-based tests (CBTs), and digital certification.

The Vice President encouraged the body to continually accept technology, noting that conducting examinations online is an important aspect of technological progress.

“Of course, the issue here is the availability of the digital infrastructure that will be able to carry this type of innovation.

This is the business of the government and the private sector. But we must begin to think about this, which is a shift from offline to online", he said.