The United Nations (UN) has set aside October 5 as World Teachers’ Day. Essentially, it is to extol the role of teachers in providing quality education at all levels. The Day is to commemorate the anniversary of the October 5, 1966 signing by UNESCO and the International Labor Organization (ILO) of the recommendation concerning “The Status of Teachers”. On October 5 1994, the first World Teachers’ Day was held. The occasion has continued to be organized on the same date each year. Events including conferences are usually organized globally to mark the World Teachers’ Day. This year’s event focused on the theme “Teachers for Gender Equality”.
In Nigeria, however, the event has never gone beyond the mere ritual of a ceremonial march past by teachers after which they listen to the speech of the Minister of Education usually laced with empty political statements. This annual event which here is devoid of any intellectual forum or activity where stakeholders would brainstorm over the teaching profession critically depicts the lowly perception, or perhaps worth, of the Nigerian teacher. The Nigerian teacher probably feels fulfilled when one or two of his colleagues are rewarded on a World Teachers’ Day with a car, motorcycle or laptop for being the “best” teacher. Do we call it celebration when the number of unqualified teachers in the system is very high; when teacher-education is characterized by policy summersault; when teachers are poorly remunerated; when the journey to professionalization of teaching in Nigeria has remained a mirage?
Inspite of the 2003 deadline that was extended to 2006 by the National Council on Education at its 50th Session in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State in 2003 for unqualified teachers to obtain the minimum teaching qualification; significant statistics of teachers at the basic level of education in Nigeria are still either untrained or unqualified. Daily Trust edition of Friday September 23, 2011 carries a story on page 2 which reveals that 25, 000 unqualified primary school teachers exist in Kano state. The paper further quotes the Kano State Commissioner for Budget and planning, Alhaji Yusuf Bello Dambatta, as saying that “another 1,600 unqualified teachers teach in junior secondary schools in the state”. Similarly, Daily Trust edition of Thursday September 29, 2011 similarly reports the Minister of State for Finance, Dr. Yerima Ngama, as saying that “80% of Yobe State primary school teachers are unqualified”. These two media reports indicate that there are more unqualified than there are qualified teachers in the system particularly at the basic level of education in Nigeria.
The TRCN is empowered to prosecute unqualified persons found to be performing the job of teachers in contravention of the TRCN Act section 17(2). If this is the case, why then five years after the expiration of the 2006 deadline given by government do we still have unqualified teachers as recently reported, for instance, in Kano and Yobe states polluting the system and destroying its products? A few years ago, the National Council on Education at an extra-ordinary meeting in Abuja revealed that there were about 70, 0000 teachers with no more than the Teachers’ Grade Two Certificate. The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) was established by Decree (Now Act) 31 of 1993 to among other statutory responsibilities regulate and control the teaching profession in all its aspects and ramifications. The TRCN is also charged with the duty of clarifying from time to time members of the teaching profession according to their level of training and qualification. It is equally to establish and maintain a register of teachers and the publication from time to time of the lists of those persons.
As the system grossly suffers from inadequate number of qualified teachers, it is also faced with the problem of teachers teaching subjects other than those in which they received training; simply due to dearth of qualified teachers particularly in the core subjects of English, Mathematics and Science. A situation where diploma holders and graduates who never received any training in the field of education are employed to teach at the basic and secondary levels of our educational system further confirms the reality that teaching is yet to be a profession in Nigeria. Teaching is still seen in Nigeria as a career that requires no technical or specialized knowledge for anybody to partake in it. Indeed, many of those teaching today at all levels of the system have no business being teachers. Educational managers and administrators fall short of any defensible excuse to explain why we should have trained engineers and quantity surveyors teaching mathematics in schools. Why is it not possible for every Tom, Dick and Harry to claim to be a lawyer or a medical doctor? It is simply because these jobs are recognized as professions which minimum entry qualification(s) must be obtained before being allowed to practice.
Perhaps, a more serious challenge is in the area of teacher-education that has remained typified in recent years with policy inconsistencies. While it is obvious that the task of making NCE a minimum teaching qualification in Nigeria has been challenging to government, the same government came up in 2010 with a proposal to scrap the NCE programme offered by Colleges of Education (COEs) in the country. This proposal, if government proceeds with it, would raise the minimum teaching qualification and replace it with a bachelor’s degree in education (B. Ed). But how feasible would this be in a country that is unable to make NCE its minimum teaching qualification? The only reason advanced by the then minister of state who announced the phasing out of the NCE programme last year was that the quality of teachers produced by the COEs in the country was too poor to cater for the needs of the basic level of education.
If anything was wrong with the quality of NCE graduates in the country, the appropriate thing would have been to direct the regulatory agency of the programme which is the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) to review the curriculum of the NCE in the light of emerging educational trends and challenges. In truth, some educationists including Professor Adamu Baike believe that even the scrapping of the Teachers’ Grade Two Certificate programme in the country was untimely and a mistake that largely accounts today for most of the challenges bedeviling teacher-education and the teaching career in the country. This is true when you consider the fact that the training received by NCE graduates does not make them the best teachers for the lower and middle classes of the basic level of education. While Teachers’ Colleges prepare their graduates to teach nearly all subjects at the primary school level, the NCE programme prepares teachers in only two subject areas.
Talking about remuneration of teachers in Nigeria is another disappointing tale. For two months at the beginning of the 2010/2011 session, public primary school teachers in the FCT, for example, were on strike over the non-payment of their monetization arrears for 22 months. These and other challenges discussed above have negatively impacted on the quality of education at the basic level. These failures gradually informed the collapse of the system especially in public schools leading in stages to the proliferation of private schools; extra-lessons; exam coaching centers.
Our leaders must appreciate the truth that no nation rises above the quality of her teachers. There is need, therefore, for a deliberate and coordinated effort by government to professionalize teaching in Nigeria. May Allah (SWT) give our leaders the rectitude of mind that would improve the prestige of teachers and teacher-education in the country, amin.
