This is the concluding part of the report, by Ebele Orakpo, which was first published on Friday and continued on Saturday.

JAMB candidates writing their computer based test

IYAM also believes that retraining of teachers is not enough. In his words: “At this stage, retraining alone won’t solve our educational problems. A total restructing is needed. We need to restructure the weak systems that are responsible for building education at all spheres, we can then begin to see positive change.”

Okuneye believes that the phasing out of Teacher Training Colleges, TTCs and   making the National Certificate in Education, NCE, the lowest qualification for primary school teachers, contributed immensely to the destruction of the education sector.

“We used to have Grades III, II and I teachers and the NCE was made the lowest qualification to teach in primary schools as part of the National Policy on Education. Now, if you want me to teach in the primary school, are you training me for that? Most of the NCE teachers cannot cope in primary school because the curriculum is not tailored towards the primary school. NCE holders can only teach in secondary schools.”

Mrs. Oyeneye agrees with Okuneye on the issue of Teacher Training Colleges. She said that government must play the role of saving the educational system.

“The good old Teacher Training College should be revisited. I strongly feel that it is wrong to blame the teachers, if you don’t train them. To my mind, sacking them is simply not the answer. The issue of the curriculum is there, there is the new Basic Curriculum that is enriched with new contents. How grounded are these teachers in the rudiments of the current curriculum?” she asked.

Give teachers place of honour:

Reports said that teachers in Germany have the highest salary in the country, and when judges, doctors and engineers asked the chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel for same salary, her reply was: “How can I compare you to those who taught you?”

Proffering solution to the problem, the Principal, Corona Secondary School, Agbara, Mrs. Chinedum Oluwadamilola said that teaching ought to be given the place of honour that it deserves. “This should not be by platitudes but by real action backing such clichés. When that is done, the best brains will fight to be admitted into teaching.

“This has been done by the Scandinavian countries such as Finland and Sweden, which have the best quality of education in the world. In these countries, it is prestigious to be admitted into an education programme of study.”

On the issue of non-trained teachers in the system who are good, Mrs Oluwadamilola advises they should be trained. Her words: “Mid-entrants into the teaching field do somewhat better and should be encouraged. These are those who studied other courses and eventually for one reason or the other, switched to teaching. It is important that such entrants be mandated to go for a post-graduate degree in Education course so as to be qualified education professionals.”

Amed said the best way is “to identify those individuals as soon as possible and provide them education and alternative jobs to encourage others to come out without fear. The education sector has to evaluate itself and increase inspections and practical evaluation of its community. We shouldn’t be afraid to critically evaluate our profession.

Education sector should focus on corrections of problems and improving education not punishment. We must get the right teachers and build the system to develop the teachers. A school is as good as the weakest teacher in the school. The children are Nigeria’s treasures and teachers are the nurturers,” said Adefisayo, regretting that the education budget benefits adults and not the children.

For Yakubu, just sacking over 1,000 teachers in Kaduna State for failing a test wasn’t the best. He said: “Looking at the situation, the government of El-Rufai could have set up a committee to re-verify their certificates; verify who employed unqualified teachers; train those who are trainable and based on recommendation, sack those who are not trainable; sanction the directors responsible for the recruitment of the ‘teachers’ and overhaul the units handling education. There is need for total overhauling of the Inspectorate unit.” He however, said “it was a bold step taken by the government, but for political reasons, it has generated a lot of noise.”

Mrs. Oyeneye called for training and re-training of teachers. “Teachers must be trained to teach, how to teach and what to teach. Furthermore, all those in the teaching profession must be qualified and not see teaching as the last resort because they cannot get the ‘big’ jobs.”

In sharp contrast to what obtains in Finland, in Nigeria, the calibre of people admitted into the teaching profession is the academically weak and emotionally unwilling. Said Okebukola: “Many teachers have shallow knowledge of their teaching subjects and worse still, shallower knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship to positively influence their students. The paradigm of preparation of these teachers largely accounts for this sad situation. First, we admit mainly the academically weak and emotionally unwilling into teacher education programmes. With low self-esteem and minimum motivational propelling power, these teacher trainees are corralled like sheep through the machinery of the teacher preparation process and come out ill-trained and ill-suited for the challenges of 21st   Century teaching in a country aspiring to be one of the 20 largest economies by 2020.”

Proper supervision of teaching-learning process: Oluwadamilola noted that the key to a successful education system is a thorough and constant supervision of the teaching-learning process. “The supervisors should also know what to look out for. The Quality Assurance and Evaluation units of the Ministry of Education at both federal and state levels should be more proactive and sincere in their responsibilities. Teacher Education should be properly evaluated; schools management should insist on qualified and quality teachers.

Employment of teachers should be done strictly with assessments of the teachers. Some aptitude tests and tests in their areas of study will be helpful. Then like I mentioned above, training through workshops – practical things that can be done in class to make classroom interaction flow. All stakeholders should be truly more interested in what goes on in our schools. Parents and guardians have a great role to play. All hands must be on deck,” she said.

Education inspectors

On Education sector supervision, Mrs. Nwogo Ekpunobi said: “The Federal Ministry of Education, FME, Universal Basic Education Commission, UBEC; State Universal Education Boards, SUBEB; Local Government Education Authority, LGEA, all have inspectorate divisions/departments.

They are supposed to carry out supervision and inpection of schools and teachers from time to time and assess them. Most of the time, this is not done. This, most of the time, is not the fault of the inspectorates because in most cases, they are not adequately funded and most of them do not have enough monitoring vehicles.”

Mrs. Chinedum Oluwadamilola said the Ministry of Education through the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) in all the states is in charge of recruiting teachers. She regretted that education inspectors are almost always behind the time.

“You can’t be inspecting people with the aim of raising and maintaining standards and you are like two decades behind.” She, however, agrees with Ekpunobi that the inspectors are not entirely to be blamed. “Inspectors need to get up to-date education, but they are battling with so many things and that may not happen until the government takes a strong grip on education.”

Lack of infrastructure: Lack of infrastructure is aniother issue. In some instances, you may have good teachers but without the right tools, they can do very little. Some of these are reading materials, desks, tables, classrooms, etc. It is an open secret that in some schools, children sit on the floor to learn. Karon Harden said that her students at AUN in the course of teaching children in public schools in Yola noticed that the children lacked reading materials so they had to write books or translate already existing books into local languages for better comprehension of the pupils.

“The reading has been in the English Language although about half of our tutors speak Hausa or Fulfulde so they can use some Hausa or Fulfulde in  the tutoring session. From a linguistic point of view, if you learn to read in a language that you understand first, then it will strengthen your English literacy later.

“Over 95 per cent of the pupils do not speak English at home and they never hear English outside the school so they don’t have the comprehension. They need to acquire the reading skills and the English language, the vocabulary, the sentences and how you put the words together in a sentence and what they mean when you put them together. These are actually two separate skills fused into one because they are trying to learn to read and to understand the language at the same time.”

Way forward

On the way forward, Okuneye said: “The main goal of the teaching profession/education should be to achieve quality teachers and maintain them for posterity. It is obvious that the global challenges facing education make quality assurance in teacher education mandatory. Only qualified teachers should be recruited to teach.

The idea of using teaching as a dumping ground for job seekers should be completely discouraged if we must have quality assurance in teacher education. Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria, TRCN, registration and licence should be additional requirement for appointment as teachers. There should be recurrent training for teachers to improve their professional competence, such training could be in the form of workshops, seminars, presentation, demonstration, etc.

There should be full participation of teachers in research processes. The teaching profession should be made an enviable one that will attract best brains around.

Administrative bottlenecks: “Prompt payment of teachers’ salaries may also help to change the poor image of teachers and earn them special respect which in turn, will improve their concept of themselves. No efforts should be spared in removing the administrative bottlenecks that delay teachers’ salaries every month. Finally, to attain quality assurance in teacher education, sound programme of professional education for teachers is very essential for the qualitative improvement of education.”

Said Nwogo Ekpunobi: “The way forward is to address all the issues mentioned above.These include: recruiting well qualified teachers, making it mandatory for teachers to undergo continuing professional development from time to time, selecting good students into colleges of education by making the cut-off mark to be at par with that of universities, recruiting teachers by merit and finally, the Inspectorate Division in the ministry and states must be strengthened and empowered.”

A former Commissioner for Education in Delta State, Dr. Veronica Ogbuagu said that increased pay, increased certification requirements, more accountability, career ladders, peer review, training teachers as researchers, and encouraging teachers themselves to set the standards for entrance into the profession, are some of the ways to turn teachers into high status professionals.

“There is need to establish a board to be known as the National Board For Professional Teaching Standards, NBPTS. This board will be saddled with the responsibility of strengthening teaching as a profession and raising the quality of education by recognising the contributions of exemplary teachers, compensate them financially, give them increased responsibility and increase their role in decision-making,” said Ogbuagu.

“Honestly, I wish I knew the way forward. There is certainly no easy answer,” said Prof. Umolu.

Who should or should not be in the teaching profession?

There are academics who have no business in the education sector as they are there because they have no better jobs.

Meanwhile, in Finland, the country with the best education system in the world, only the best of the best go into the teaching profession.

In St. Kitts & Nevis, SKN, an Eastern Caribbean island country has a literacy level of 98% according to the country’s Honorary Consul in Nigeria, Mrs Tessy Ekpunobi. The quality of teachers no doubt, contributed to this great feat. Speaking further on the nation’s education sector in a chat with Vanguard, Deputy Chief Education Officer in the Ministry of Education, Mr. Daryl Lloyd said: “We aim for the best as we believe that education is the key to the future. Applications are open to anyone who has at least the minimum qualification. (An applicant must have at least 5 Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate, CSEC, subjects at the Primary school level which must include Math, English, a science subject and a social science subject, either History, Geography or Social Studies. At the High school level, one must have at least 5 subjects – English being one and what is to be taught must be at the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations, CAPE, level. Once qualified, applicants take part in a pre-service training,” he said.

“The Ministry of Education gets the second largest percentage of the annual budget.

The ministry has education officers who are assigned to schools as well as the Curriculum Development Unit which has subject coordinators that monitor the curriculum and what goes on in schools.@

There are times when we have training across the different levels or times when there is training just for one level,” noted Lloyd.