Now that primary school teachers have failed exams in Kaduna…

It is definitely laudable that we now finally have a governor who at least pays attention to the primary education sub sector of Kaduna State, in Malam Nasir El-Rufai. This gladdens my heart considering where we were before now. Having said this, I wasn’t surprised when the governor embarked on a mission to measure the […]

It is definitely laudable that we now finally have a governor who at least pays attention to the primary education sub sector of Kaduna State, in Malam Nasir El-Rufai. This gladdens my heart considering where we were before now. Having said this, I wasn’t surprised when the governor embarked on a mission to measure the competence of primary school teachers in public schools in the state.

The outcomes were, of course, not in the least bit surprising to anyone who has ever so much as driven past an L.E.A school anywhere in Nigeria. I am of the strong opinion that we would be better off shutting those things down and providing parents with the means to homeschool their own kids. It’s a travesty of the noble concept of learning.

However, I most certainly do not agree with the governor’s decision to disengage around 20,000 teachers that failed the competency tests for reasons that I may not expect a member of the elite to understand.

I did a bit of research on some of the best education systems in the world such as those in Norway, Sweden, Finland, and one thing that even educators in these OECD countries admit is that “broad educational outcomes cannot be isolated from other aspects of the economy that influence learning and achievement.” Studies clearly and empirically show that “teachers and public schools are threads in a social fabric that includes affordable child care, health coverage [and more topically in this instance] job training.”

I am confident that a review of the occupational history of these teachers will most likely reveal that they haven’t received any job training for ages. This is assuming that they even did at the outset. While I do not condone incompetence (even though let’s face it this is a very common facet of everyday life here), I have to admit that these teachers in question are as much victims of a broken system as are the poor kids, past and present.

This is because both they and their students have had to teach and learn under environments that would make even Albert Einstein consider hawking groundnuts. Nobody comes up with the general theory of relativity while studying in a dilapidated classroom with no desks or textbooks. If you doubt me, show me one Einstein here!

Rules should serve the people and not the other way round. The law often has to wear a human face because things aren’t always black and white. 20,000 unemployed people in this “APC economy” is a disaster waiting to happen. But on a lighter note, I attempted some of the test questions posted on El-Rufai’s page and expectedly I failed all the ones that had even the slightest hint of mathematics in them. So sue me!

Tijjani wrote in from Kaduna.