QUALITY STEAM EDUCATION FOR EMPLOYABILITY IN NIGERIA: RUNNING AHEAD
Keywords:
Employability, Quality education, STEAM education, Sustainable Development Goals, Unemployment.Abstract
The core mandate of the Nigerian education industry includes employment generation, poverty eradication, socioeconomic transformation, and wealth creation among others. One in every three (33.3 %) employable Nigerians are unemployed. Globally, education is regarded as a potent tool for sustainable national development, and the key to eradicating poverty, unemployment and insecurity. In spite of the fact that there are hundreds of tertiary educational institutions and several thousands of primary and secondary schools in the nation, unemployment increases at an alarming rate annually, while human development remains appalling. This calls to question the quality of education available in the nation. It equally raises an urgent need to revamp the education sector and focus specially on STEAM education in order to eradicate unemployment and poverty and put the nation on the path to sustainable socio-economic development. Therefore, this paper focuses on operationalization of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) number 4 (Quality Education) and leveraging it to promote employability of products of STEAM education from Nigerian educational institutions. The paper advocates for innovative quality control mechanism in the education system, curricula changes and stronger synergy between the work places and education sector.
