By Christian Appolos | Abuja
The National Directorate of Employment (NDE), an agency of the Federal Government under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, has in recent times established many job creation programmes.
The Graduate Coaching Scheme (GCS) of the directorate is the rarest among the job creation programmes because it has a two-face impact. The programme has recorded great success under Mallam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, the Director-General of NDE.
The GCS is supervised by the NDE’s Special Public Works (SPW) department and was designed to provide both transient and permanent/sustainable employment for unemployed graduates, especially those with teaching background.
The scheme aims at preparing deficient students for various external examinations such as JAMB, WAEC, NECO, GCE, NABTEB, etc.
While it provides opportunities that enable students to make up for their deficiency in various subjects and also qualify them for admission into higher institutions of learning, it also offers job creation opportunities for the graduate who will do the tutoring job.
The directorate said an assessment on the success of the programme revealed the Graduate Coaching Scheme (GCS) has previously recorded tremendous success in meeting with set target and expected output.
The impact assessment conducted in 2018 showed that 75 percent of students who benefited from GCS had five credits including in Mathematics and English Language. It stated that further execution of the scheme will improve the educational performance of the students and reduce the rate of failure to the barest minimum.
The DG of the NDE, Mallam Fikpo, told journalists in Abuja that the GCS was designed, among other objectives, “to create employment for unemployed graduates; to prepare students for their various examinations in order to reduce the rate of failure to the barest minimum; to combat youth restiveness by engaging the students in productive academic exercise during the period; to assist students qualify for admission into higher institutions of learning.”
He added that the target group of GCS is “the unemployed graduates of tertiary institutions, most especially those with background in education (professional teachers), and students who want to sit for GCE,WAEC, NECO, NABTEB and JAMB so as to make up for their deficiencies in some subjects.”
Mallam Fikpo also said implementation of the scheme will cover “three senatorial districts in each state of the Federation and the FCT, 1,332 unemployed graduates at 11 instructors per senatorial district and three supervisors per state.”
The implementation procedure of the programme, according to the directorate, will be handled by the NDE state offices. They are expected to create adequate awareness in the three senatorial districts where the scheme will be implemented in each state and three different locations of the FCT.
“The NDE state offices will ensure that the registration, recruitment and selection of the unemployed graduates and the affected students for coaching, is carried out accordingly.
“Orientation will be conducted by state SPW officers with the supervision of the State Coordinators.
“The purchase of the consumable items and instructional materials will be under custody of the SPW headquarters’ staff for accountability, transparency and the smooth running of the scheme. Hence, the list of the consumables are attendance register, hardcover notebooks for instructors, cartons of marker, cartons of duster, file jackets, rims of paper, packets of pen (red, blue and black), white board, GCE/WAEC/NECO/NABTEB/JAMB past questions and answers booklets.
“The SPW headquarters’ staff will conduct a compliance check and supervision of the entire implementation of the scheme,” it added.
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