FG TO REQUIRE STUDENTS TO HAVE ICT SKILLS BEFORE GRADUATION
Read Time:1 Minute, 36 Second
The federal government Tertiary Education Trust Fund, plans to make it mandatory for students to have ICT skills before graduating as part of its effort at bridging the digital skills gap between industries and schools.
According to Sonny Echono, executive secretary, TETFund, the government has drafted a policy to ensure that students in higher institutions acquire digital skills before graduating.
At the 2023 Train the Trainer ICT Capacity Workshop for Beneficiary Institutions in North Central zone on Monday in Abuja, Echono said closing the digital skills gap would help produce graduates who are capable of competing on a global scale.
According to him, the need for capacity building, internet access availability, electronic journals, database subscription, and many others have been identified in our various institutions.
He emphasised the significance of using digital technology to further research at the beneficiary institutions and the nation at large.
“The Federal Government has drafted a policy as a minimum academic standard which would require that graduates possess an ICT knowledge before graduation.”
Speaking further, Echono said that digital literacy was necessary as the country was not producing enough skilled manpower that would serve the country’s 220 million people.
He also said that there was a mismatch between employers and skills produced by graduates, hence the need to close the gap.
”In today’s world, there is a template on which one can operate. Even our teaching staff, non-teaching staff, and management staff, including the majority of the workforce, do not possess these digital skills.
”We at TETFund want to do our best to bridge that gap and if we succeed in ensuring our students are digitally literate, it will make them marketable and create avenues for enhanced research,” he said.
He, therefore, pledged the commitment of the fund to sustain the initiative to ensure every institution is globally competitive and as well Nigeria could compete favourably in the committee of nations.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0