• Friday, March 29, 2024
businessday logo

BusinessDay

‘Tackling malaise of teacher quality should top education ministers’ to-do list’

UNEC, CLICE want better education system in Nigeria

Whoever Muhammadu Buhari decides to give the portfolio of the minister of education must as a matter of urgency tackle the malaise of poor teacher capacity. Education stakeholders have advocated.

They observed that one reoccurring decimal in the education sector in Nigeria over the past two decades has to do with the consistent decline in the quality and quantity of professional teachers in the country.

Modupe Adefeso-Olateju, an education expert and managing director of the education partnership centre (TEP) observes that to strengthen teacher performance; decision-makers must take a long view by identifying and attracting potentially high-quality teaching talent into the classroom and creating systemic pathways to ensure that they remain and perform well.

“We can identify better teaching talent by raising the entry requirements into the teaching profession, so that higher performers apply says, Adefeso-Olateju adding that test prospective teachers for non-academic qualities essential to students’ learning including enthusiasm, flexibility, and creativity.

To her, “Recruitment policies should allow for non-traditional but high-potential teaching talent to be embedded into the civil service by allowing for professionals with interest in teaching to combine reduced teaching hours with simultaneous participation in teacher training”.

Industry experts maintain that until our teachers are better trained and well-motivated, all efforts to improve the quality of the education system will be severely compromised. In the quest to increase teacher quantity, all manner of persons and all manner of part-time and sandwich programmes are part of the current menu of teacher training.

In striving for the production of quality teachers not just qualified teachers. Educationists are of the opinion that recruited teachers when employed should not go into classrooms without undergoing induction.

On his part, Osaretin Olurotimi, an education researcher in Lagos said to strengthen teacher performance; Government would play a role in implementing solutions to improve teacher quality by raising entry requirements and investing in quality preparation programmes.

Olurotimi further said that community organisations and citizens should take on the role of facilitating collaborations between teachers’ in-school efforts and broader community development imperatives.

According to him, “These will give teachers voice and recognition and ensure that teaching is no longer viewed as a profession for those without better alternatives

“A programme to manage teacher performance must include an investment in the capacity of school administrators to handle an evaluation system appropriately; deliver feedback; discover training needs; and design or customise reward or disciplinary incentives for the teachers,” he said.

While industry experts in the education space acknowledged that Nigeria’s education sector is faced with a plethora of problems such as underfunding, deteriorating infrastructure/equipment, dearth of quality teachers, they however are of the view that with the right collaboration between all stakeholders in the sector the threatening effect of teacher’s capacity would be resolved.

 

KELECHI EWUZIE