The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved the hosting of ministerial retreat to end crises in the education sector.
The retreat, which aims at reviewing education roadmap, plans to brainstorm on how to boost standard of education in Nigeria.
Minister of Education Adamu Adamu briefed State House correspondents at the end of the FEC meeting chaired by Acting President Yemi Osinbajo, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Adamu, who was with the Special Adviser on Media and Publicity, Femi Adesina, said: “Council discussed very important issue on the roadmap of education sector and developments. We discussed many issues but the most important was education.
“Members agree that the fallen standard in education is so serious that we will need a ministerial retreat to look at all the issues. There are a lot of issues crying for attention.
“So, there will be a ministerial retreat in the next two weeks to look at the issues and from there we will take off in what we are doing.
“Initially, we had prepared blueprint but FEC felt the issues are beyond that because there are crises in all the areas of education, in children school, in technical education and training, in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) – in all the areas you can think of.
“So, ministers are going to start talking to themselves and come out with solutions.”
He faulted the media reports on the issue of Christian Religious Knowledge (CRK) teaching and History subject in schools.
He said: “There is no truth in it at all. It was just somebody’s imagination; probably somebody who wishes to raise tension in the country after the Biafra issue and then the quit order given by some young people in the North. So, the person just followed suit trying to stoke the embers of religion. There is no truth whatsoever, I repeat.
“Certainly, there was a policy in 2012, which was given effect in 2014 – that is even before this government came in. One of the things I did as minister was to speak to the national council on education to disarticulate history from the social studies curricula because we believe we want our young people to know our history.
“You cannot know who you are without knowing who your ancestors were in the past. And the National Council of Education did accept and agree that the teaching and learning of CRK has been made compulsory for all Christian students and teaching and learning of Islamic Studies is compulsory for all Muslim students.”
He noted that the reports were accusing the ministry of doing the opposite of what it did.