Address the process, not the product

The envoy had told the minister that all teachers in Finland have a minimum of master’s degree because “teaching,” in their country, “is a highly competitive profession due to huge interest by too many qualified people.” This assertion of the ambassador to which I will return in the later part of this discourse, provides a […]

The envoy had told the minister that all teachers in Finland have a minimum of master’s degree because “teaching,” in their country, “is a highly competitive profession due to huge interest by too many qualified people.” This assertion of the ambassador to which I will return in the later part of this discourse, provides a basis for interrogating the minister of education’s proclamation.
A similar pronouncement was made in the past, though on a different premise, by an erstwhile minister of state for education, Kenneth Gbagi. While addressing stakeholders at a one-day meeting in 2011 in Abuja to disseminate study report on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), teachers, Gbagi announced that the federal government had concluded plans, then, to phase out the National Certificate of Education (NCE) offered by colleges of education (COEs) in the country. The only reason advanced then for the proposed phasing out of the NCE programme and its replacement with a bachelor’s degree as the minimum teaching qualification was that the quality of teachers produced by the COEs was too poor to cater for the basic educational needs of the country.
If the poor quality of teachers produced by the COEs was believed to be the basis for Gbagi’s failed proposal as well as for Shekarau’s recent pronouncement, I do not think that the remedy to the problem was (or is) in the scrapping of NCE programme. Neither does the answer lie in raising the minimum teaching qualification from NCE to a bachelor’s degree. The problem, which the ministers of education most often misconstrue, is more with the process (i.e. the NCE programme) that produces poor quality teachers than it is assumed to be with the product (i.e. the certificate).
Again, if the poor quality of NCE graduates is, for instance, taken for granted to be the reason for the upward review of the minimum teaching qualification in Nigeria, it does not require the services of a soothsayer or rocket scientist to know that the same factor(s) that prompted the jettisoning of grade two teachers’ certificate (TC II) as minimum teaching qualification would soon bedevil bachelor’s degree programmes. Unless we are able to critically examine and properly re-position the teacher education programme in the country, things may continue in that chain until a PhD degree is eventually made the minimum teaching qualification.
The decision (or proposal) to make first degree the new minimum teaching qualification would seem to be unworkable, for now, as it only adds up to the existing crisis in the education sector. This was how the premature scrapping of the TC II failed to actually professionalise teaching; keeping us arguing over minimum teaching qualification several years after the establishment of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN). The decision to scrap teachers’ colleges in order to raise minimum teaching qualification to NCE was actually taken in error because the training of NCE holders was not compatible with what was expected of them while teachers’ colleges prepared their graduates to teach nearly all subjects at the primary school level, the NCE programme prepares them in only two subject areas. This policy summersault has had its negative impact on the professionalisation of teaching in Nigeria.
The Special Teacher Upgrading Programme (STUP) introduced by the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI) to upgrade holders of the TC II to the minimum national requirement of NCE has, rather being a blessing, worsened the crisis at the basic level of the country’s education system. Some graduates of the STUP can hardly write even a letter. If dearth of trained and qualified teachers is a good reason for organising the STUP; the same reason should not be an excuse for running sub-standard academic programmes in our institutions.
Let us now return to the Finnish ambassador’s comment quoted at the beginning of this discourse. His assertion that all teachers in his home-country are master’s degree holders isn’t a strong basis for Nigeria’s education minister to propose a minimum of first degree as the entry qualification in to the teaching profession. Perhaps, it could be that Shekarau’s declaration was because he had nothing to say that may be as impressive as the remarks of the Finnish ambassador about teaching. While teaching in Finland may be highly competitive, the same profession has over the years in Nigeria remained very unattractive. Without necessarily raising the minimum teaching qualification, master’s and PhD degree holders in Nigeria would be proud and happy to join the teaching profession if government makes it attractive.
The absence of a mechanism to motivate qualified teachers to stay on the job is a critical challenge to the teaching profession in Nigeria. Most of those who possess requisite teaching qualification use teaching as a stepping stone to what they consider to be better paying jobs; creating ample opportunity for unqualified people to bastardise the profession and the system as well. Indeed, teachers’ welfare is central to sustaining the interest of qualified teachers in the job. If the basic foundation of education is unsteady, the secondary and tertiary levels of the system would be rickety as well.
To resolve the subject of this discourse, government needs to tackle the system that graduates low quality teachers; and not the minimum teaching qualification. The internal structures at the NTI must be strengthened to address quality control. Authorities at the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), which has the statutory duty of accrediting, monitoring and evaluating institutions that award NCE must also ensure that minimum academic standards are guaranteed by the awarding COEs. May Allah (SWT) guide educational policy makers in Nigeria to serve the sector in the best interest of present and future generations, amin.