FG plans short courses for primary school teachers

                                         Prof Lilian Salami

The National Institute for Educational Planning and Administration, an agency of the Ministry of Education, said a proposal was underway to organise short courses for primary school teachers nationwide.

The NIEPA Director-General, Prof Lilian Salami, said this in Abuja in an exclusive interview with our correspondent, while reacting to the planned sack of 21,780 primary school teachers by the Kaduna State Government for failing the recent competency test.

Although the Nigerian Union of Teachers has threatened to embark on an industrial action, the state government insisted that there was no going back on the sack, saying two-thirds of the teachers failed to score up to 75 per cent in the test.

The NIEPA DG, Salami, said the institute would intensify on “building the capacity of teachers and education managers, which may be in form of the short courses.”

She noted that throwing the teachers out of schools would add to the already high unemployment rate.

Salami said, “The problem of inadequate teachers cuts across the country. Even in Edo State at about two years ago, we had the same issue. This is not a problem that has a one-stop fix. We have lots of issues that have taken us to where we are today.

“When the Kaduna issue came up, we approached the permanent secretary and said that what we could do was to build the capacity of these teachers. You don’t want to push them out there, because then, you will bloat up the already high employment rate.

“What we can do is to see whether these persons are teachable. If they are, we want to develop short courses for them and spread it over some period. We already have the problem of shortage of teachers and therefore, we cannot say we have too many teachers and throw some away.

“There are many children in schools and, our population is growing. So, what we must do is to have short courses for them. We will empower them so that over time, you have the quality of professionals that you want.

“Our institute was borne out of the necessity to have to build capacity for education managers at all levels. This means from primary schools to tertiary institutions. At the institute, our mandate is to deal with the challenges in the education sector in Nigeria in terms of building capacity.”