Ado-Ekiti –  Prof. Nicholas Damachi, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, has blamed the poor performance of students in both internal and public examinations on the increasing decline in the quality of teachers.

Speaking at a three-day intensive workshop on “Item Writing,” organised by the ministry for Junior Secondary School teachers in the South West Zone of the country in Ado-Ekiti, he noted that the only panacea to the dangerous trend lies in the training and re-training of teachers.

Damachi said the workshop was aimed at training of teachers in “item writing” to improve their quality of assessment to ensure uniform standards nationwide.

He noted with regret that majority of teachers did not possess the relevant competencies necessary for the implementation of continuous assessment and principles of test construction, while they had poor knowledge of scoring and interpretation of test scores.

Damachi said the competence needed in writing objective as well as reliable and standard test items could only be gained by training and experience, stressing that capacity building of teachers was one of the highest priorities of government’s reform agenda in the education sector.

He described the workshop as another bold step by the Federal Government to arrest the ugly trend, saying it would enable Junior Secondary school teachers nationwide to acquire necessary skills in item writing in core subjects, such as Mathematics, English Studies and Basic Science.

Damachi described education as the right of every Nigerian child, and urged the participants to ensure that students were made to receive good quality education that would be functional and relevant to the economic development of the country, “bearing in mind the nation’s vision to be among the first top 20 nations by 2020”.

The Director, Basic and Secondary Education, Federal Ministry of Education, Mrs Mabel Ozumba, has earlier commended the ministry’s commitment in organising the workshop, saying the effort would ensure qualitative education and also push the frontiers of knowledge to a higher level.

She said the workshop could not have come at a better time, noting that while many teachers frequently had the task of conducting tests, they lacked the experience and relevant training.

She said the aim of the trainers workshop was to ensure that teachers developed the requisite skills. (NAN)