Chief Executive of the British Council, Claran Devane, yesterday announced that the council is ready to offer training services to 500,000 teachers that will be employed by the Buhari administration.
According to Devane, Nigeria cannot be ignored due to its vast potentials, stressing that the bond between Nigeria and the Britain keeps getting better and stronger over the years.
Devane said the training would be focused at technical support and building the capacity of the teachers from their wealth of experience in education industry.
‘‘I am leading a delegation to Nigeria from the British Council and UK parliament involving journalist as well and Vice Chancellors of a leading UK universities. We are here in Nigeria to look at collaborations British Council has with Nigeria in culture sector, education sector, security and education.
‘‘We want to see what is going on and what we can learn from, which we can carry to other parts of the world. But going forward, we need to think of what is good for modern Nigeria in some ways. We need to think through how we can work through the education system which is growing rapidly and training the 500, 000 teachers the government plans to hire. We will be doing more, making new things like Lagos Festival.
‘‘We have a lot of experience from other countries and we work with teachers who become trainers. But then, a lot can be done digitally like in Pakistan, where teachers learn from different cities. In Europe and America, we have programmes with supporting class rooms and training methodology will be another input.
‘‘With the number of young people joining the school system in Nigeria, whatever we can do to support the school system we will do,’’ said Devane. He described Nigeria as one of the most important countries to the British Government, which cannot be ignored due to its potentials, saying that the bond between the two countries have grown stronger over the years.
‘‘For me, Nigeria is one of the most important countries in the world to the British Government, the bigger and fastest growing economy in Africa. Nigeria is going to be one of the powerful drivers of economy in the future. For me the connection is getting stronger, the significance of Nigeria will only grow stronger as well.’’
