TETFund: Plan to place students studying education on scholarship will yield results

The Executive Secretary of Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund), Arc Sonny Econo, has expressed confidence that Federal Government’s plan to place students studying education on scholarship and other incentives will boost enrollment into the programme and attract best brains into the teaching profession.

Arc. Echono, who stated this on Tuesday in Abuja, during a TETFund’s capacity building workshop for Colleges of Education from the northern part of the country, said despite concerns on the issue of proliferation and poor funding of existing institutions, the government cannot close its eyes to the needs of children.

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Echono challenged participants at the workshop with the theme, ‘Enhancing Pedagogical Skills and Curriculum Development for Quality Education Delivery in Nigeria Colleges of Education’, to come up with robust ideas and curriculum to attract more Nigerians to the institutions.

He said the government would keep establishing schools that would need the services of good teachers produced by the education colleges despite the challenge of funding.

“It is true we have a problem of funding and we should address it holistically but we cannot pretend that we are not going to have expanding demand, the number of institutions you have to serve you when your population is 100 million cannot be the same number when your population is 200 million,” he said.

“If you don’t want us to expand, you have to address it from the root and that root is the birth rate, birth control, if we can freeze or slow the rate we are giving birth to children, then you can now come and say let us freeze the numbers of schools that we have, otherwise you are going to create an army of illiterates who do not have the opportunity to prepare themselves and at the end, they become a bigger problem for our society.”

While commending President Muhammadu Buhari for rolling out various incentives for the nation’s teaching profession, he called for a change of orientation towards teachers as they play a major role in the society.

Speaking further, Echono decried the attitude of several state governors, who are diverting resources for teachers for political or other personal use.

On his part, Executive Secretary of National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Paulinus Okwelle, said that no stone would be left unturned to ensure the regular review of curriculum in Colleges of Education to meet up with present reality.

He said: “I want to assure you that we are not going to wait till five years before we review that again, because we must restrategise, we must reposition our NCE programmes because we have been crying of low enrollment.”