Jan 26 2016

TEACHING AND TEACHERS IN THE 2016 BUDGET

PART1

……Before approaching specific details of the curricular and pedagogical implications of the President’s bailout for the teaching profession, I must not fail to aver that the President and his team deserve plaudits for taking education to an unprecedented height through the status accorded the sector in the budget in question. Earning a lion’s share among the 2016 budgetary allocations for various sectors is portentous of an approaching golden age of education in Nigeria. If anything, the fact that education gets a considerable sum of N369.6bn in the face of Health’s N221.7bn, Defence’s N294.5bn, Transportation’s N202.0bn, and Interior’s N145.3bn marks a watershed in the history of democratic Nigeria where there hitherto had been a horrendous oppression of the education sector as well as brutish treatment and incredulous trivialisation of the interest and stakes of the operators in the noble and ennobling but highly debased profession, even in official circles.

The fact that successive administrations had failed to give the sector its deserved place significantly promoted the growing perception that education and, in specific terms, teaching, is a doomed or simply an unfavored profession. If the government at all levels brutalized the sector for so long, whose job shall it then be to now protect or redeem the heavily brutalized?

President Buhari’s favorable disposition to education speaks volumes about the quality of advice being offered him. Little wonder then that he has trodden several laudable paths in his anti-graft stance, since his assumption of office. His, so far, is an impressive performance in many respects. There has always been a clamor for the implementation of UNESCO’s recommended 26 per cent budgetary allocation for education but no government has been close to that laudable idea in the history of Independent Nigeria. Even though the appreciable thinking attributed to UNESCO finds no support in any of its document, it is an idea that may not be easily committed to the dust bin, owing to its high value.

President Buhari has commendably navigated for Nigeria this express route to renaissance and therefore deserves to be so noted and acknowledged. Even the most unrepentant among his critics or foes should begin to join those applauding him for marching decisively towards the redemption of Nigeria’s lost glory.Read on….

http://www.punchng.com/teaching-and-teachers-in-2016-budget/

PART 2

…Mr. President, Sir, out there is a conglomeration of well-trained and qualified but unemployed teachers. So, if you are seeking to employ teachers for our schools, kindly let us focus on them and not on the generality of the unemployed graduates in the country. Those ones deserve a different kind of attention. Let the unemployed accountant, engineer, lawyer, or chemist not be lumped with the unemployed qualified teachers, in the same basket. Now, answers to the guiding questions posed earlier:

One, there are more qualified teachers than there are available teaching positions.

Two, there is only a shortage of qualified teachers who are willing to accept the available teaching positions on certain conditions. The implication of this is that the government failed to make teaching attractive to some of these qualified teachers which is why some operate in non-teaching sectors. Details of this are beyond the focus of the present article.

Three, there seems to be a misconception of the idea of “qualified teachers.”

With regard to the Federal Government’s idea of addressing the “chronic shortage of teachers” by “partnering state and local governments to recruit, train and deploy 500,000 teachers”, there is nothing condemnable in partnering governments at other levels for any possible ameliorative intervention.

However, the Federal Government may need to determine the recruitment criteria of the qualified teachers in order to ensure uniformity and standardized employment for quality assurance. For instance, they must all be one, graduates of education, two, passed a competency test on their subject of teaching and three possess some ethical and personal characteristics required of classroom teachers.

There must be careful monitoring in order to discourage possible clannish sentiments to seek to prefer a substandard local indigene to a qualified cosmopolitan citizen. There has always been the despicable idea of zoning in employment slots and this has gone a long way in marring standards and watering down quality. The criteria involved must be high. Let no one reduce the standard to make way for mediocre graduates and substandard scholars. If a graduate is not good enough for other sectors, he or she can’t be good enough for the teaching profession. It may be a welcome idea for the intervention to be a Federal Government project. This way, the government may deploy the recruited qualified teachers to work in various parts of the country on an attractive package. This does not rule out the possibility of partnering state and local authorities that may only be accorded some restricted measure of control over the project. The idea being articulated here may be subjected to further examination.Read on…

http://www.punchng.com/teaching-and-teachers-in-2016-budget-2/

Rufai, Ph.D, is the Ag. Dean, Faculty of Education, Sokoto State University

Copyright PUNCH.

Oct 8 2014

WORLD TEACHERS’ DAY 2014…”INVEST IN FUTURE,INVEST IN TEACHERS”

Investing in Teachers

To every discerning mind, the theme of this year’s World Teachers’ Day, “Invest in the Future, invest in Teachers” is not only apt but calls for sober reflections and pragmatic action from all stakeholders. It would be an understatement to state that the teaching profession is losing its status as a dignified profession across the world, particularly in the developing nations. Ironically, for the developing nations to fully evolve, the teaching profession needs to be accorded the prime status which it naturally deserves. It is the failure to do this that is partially responsible for the decline in the standard of education in most nations of the world.

In Nigeria, for instance, there used to be a time when teachers played leading role in the evolution of the society. Then, aside, perhaps, missionaries who were considered second to God, teachers represented the voice of the people. All that has since changed. In our clime today, to be a teacher almost equals belonging to the dregs of the society.

In an ideal world, teacher holds the keys to a better future for all. They inspire, challenge and empower innovative and responsible global citizens. They get children into school, keep them there and help them learn. Every day, they help to build the inclusive knowledge the society needs for tomorrow. Evidence shows that teachers, their professional knowledge and skills are the most important factor for quality education. This requires stronger training upfront and continual professional development and support, to enhance performance and learning outcomes. In Nigeria, we know this and yet, far too often, teachers remain under-qualified and poorly paid, with low status, and excluded from education policy matters and decisions that concern and affect them.

In truth, nothing can replace a good teacher. And there are far too few of them today. At the global level, some 5.24 million teachers need to be recruited in order to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015 –1.58 million new recruits and 3.66 million to replace those leaving the profession. The challenge goes beyond numbers – more teachers must mean better quality learning, through appropriate training and support.

It is incontrovertible that a country cannot develop without a solid foundation for children in formal education. But the question is who and where are the teachers to lay the solid foundation? Ours is a country where majority in the teaching service became teachers by accident and where both the Nigerian leaders and society at large no longer appreciate teachers as a nation builder. It is no longer news that policy inconsistency, dearth of qualified teachers, poor and inadequate infrastructure, inadequate funding, exorbitant tuition fee, among others, have conspired to reduce our educational system to a laughing stock in the comity of nations.

Without doubt, shortage of qualified teachers and few qualified teachers not being well paid pose great dangers to the education sector. It is embarrassing that 54 years after independent, a section of the country will still be having as much as 80 per cent of unqualified teachers engaged in its schools. Truth be told, our governments are complacent as regard urge to adequately invest in teachers despite yearly lamenting poor performance in various national examinations.

When we lament about falling standard of education and poor performance in examinations, what we fail to address is that learning is not possible without professional, well trained, well supported, accountable and valued teachers. It amounts to wanting to harvest vegetable when onion is planted if we expect quality education under a situation when teachers are poorly trained and poorly supported – often disconnected from the policy decisions that affect them.

The unstable condition of teaching staff in Nigerian primary and secondary schools has crippled the system, because the condition of service does not encourage them to stay in the profession. Another major concern of teachers is salary. Not only is payment often incomplete, but the salaries are low. Salaries are set by the local, state, and federal governments, depending on which level controls the institution.

A UNESCO report states that 34.4 percent of our teachers had neither the pupils’ textbook nor the teachers’ guide for any of the school subjects. The country must lament a system in which, for instance, half of the teachers in a state are as ignorant as the pupils, especially at the primary level, or one in which for the past 20 years, many have never attended any programme to scale up knowledge!

Private schools do not fare much better. In fact they are worse in some cases as school proprietorship has virtually become an all-comers affair for commercial reasons. This phenomenal growth can be discouraged throughout the country if the states invest maximum attention and resources in public schools. In the same way, the Federal Government has to make a bold statement of unwavering commitment to the education of Nigeria’s children by putting more money in teacher training.

Of course, a rigorous staff training and re-training programme should begin in earnest to make the best out of the situation now within the shortest possible time. There can never be too much of such investment to make the desired impact.

There is no stronger foundation for lasting peace and sustainable development than a quality education provided by well trained, valued, supported and motivated teachers. The education of future generations hangs in the balance unless we can rise to the challenge of putting the best possible teacher in every classroom.

• Musbau wrote in from Ikeja,Lagos./dailyindependentnig.com