Planned revival of teachers’ colleges in Nigeria

The resolve of the federal government to improve the quality of education in the country is certainly a welcome development. But the idea of reviving teachers’ colleges as part of the strategies may not be necessary. What is needed is for government to carefully study the situation, identify the real problems and address them squarely. […]

The resolve of the federal government to improve the quality of education in the country is certainly a welcome development. But the idea of reviving teachers’ colleges as part of the strategies may not be necessary. What is needed is for government to carefully study the situation, identify the real problems and address them squarely. One of the assumptions behind the idea of reviving teachers’ colleges is that the quality of the teachers is the major problem in the sector. Another assumption is that when revived, the colleges will produce the same quality teachers as before.
I was opportune to serve in a committee that assessed the problems of primary education in my state. That exercise brought us face to face with the real problems in the sector. Some of the major problems have nothing to do the training of teachers. In fact, so long as those problems remain, however good the teacher training arrangement is, it will amount to nothing. These problems are corruption in the system, lack of motivation associated with poor welfare packages and general conditions of service, negative society perception of a teacher and teaching profession and low school enrolments.
One of the areas of corruption in the system is in teachers’ recruitment, posting and training. Officials charged with the responsibility of recruitment, populate the payroll with their wives, children or political associates as “teachers”, leaving qualified teachers mostly NCE and degree holders unemployed. It is not unusual to find persons who have never been to school, and WAEC failures on the payroll as “teachers”. Sometimes appointment offers are sold to those who can afford to buy but not necessarily qualified. And because of whom they are, these “teachers” are usually concentrated in the urban schools. You find an urban school with over one hundred “teachers”, while in the rural areas a school may have just two or three teachers. The same problem happens whenever there is training opportunity. Only the privileged ones are selected for the training, not for the training sake, but for the allowance involved. So, even if the teachers’ colleges are revived and assuming the quality of their products is as good as it used to be, the sector will continue to face the challenges of qualified teachers, because they will end up unemployed as long as they are not connected with the recruiting officials or have no money to buy the offers.
Another big problem with the sector has to do with poor welfare package and general conditions of service for teachers. The salary is meagre, no accommodation, no means of transport and sometimes not even a table and chair to sit. A primary school is constructed with just blocks of classrooms, no teachers’ houses, no toilets and no staff room. Certainly, the conditions are not motivating enough to retain those already in the system or to attract others to join.
This is the reason why the number of teachers is reducing every day. Most of the qualified teachers have left for greener pastures in organisations such as Federal Road Safety, Civil Defence, Banks, Immigration, Customs departments, or mainstream civil service as administrators. Sometimes even within the system, you find NCE holders changing cadre to become clerks in the LGEA offices.
The NUT doesn’t seem to be helping matters; in some places they allow exploitative loan schemes that further improverish their members. Here again, the issue has nothing to do with the quality of the training. No matter how well trained the teachers are, so long as the pay and condition of service are poor, they will not be willing to take teaching job. Even where they take the job for lack of alternative, they are usually not enthusiastic about it, but very reluctant and use it only as a stepping stone towards a “better” job.
Added to the problem of lack of motivation, is the issue of societal perception of the teaching profession. Unlike before, one of the first challenges the teachers’ colleges will face if revived is patronage. Given the current negative societal perception towards teaching profession, parents may not be interested and will not allow their children to enroll in such colleges to be trained as teachers. In our universities today, most of the brilliant candidates with high UTME scores do not choose education as a course. You will see parents foaming at the month if their children are offered education. Some of them will rather forgo the admission and retake the UTME. Majority of those studying education are doing so as a last option. So if revived, the teachers’ colleges may end up with no patronage.
On low pupils’ enrolment into schools, the figures are disturbing. According to the 2015 global monitoring report (GMR), Nigeria has the highest number of out of school children in the world. The situation is said to be particularly worse in the North-west and North-eastern states. In some rural communities, schools are virtually empty. Head teachers face herculean task trying to get pupils to enroll into schools. Sometimes, the apparent side-lining of traditional institutions in enrolment drive makes the exercise even more difficult. In addition, there is the problem of “negative feedback”. Parents have an expectation from the schools. The fact of the matter is that there is no effective teaching and learning in rural schools, therefore the expectation is not usually met. After spending six years in primary school, the children end up not been able to read or write and could not get admission into secondary school, as such, parents become disappointed and lose confidence in the system. That is why instead of enrolling into such schools, parents prefer to engage their children in farming, animal rearing, fishing, illegal mining activities, stone crushing, or other family trades that will bring immediate economic benefits to the families. They do so, also to avoid a situation whereby their children will end up not learning the family trade and not getting anything out of the school system, the so-called “neither here nor there”.
Unfortunately majority of our population are in these rural areas. Therefore, deliberate effort must be put in place to restore the confidence of the rural populace in the school system. Measures must be put in place to attract qualified teachers to the rural areas and necessary infrastructures and teaching materials provided to ensure effective teaching and learning in the rural schools, so that the rural people will see their children writing and speaking good English, going further and becoming, doctors, engineers, directors of finance and so on.
Therefore, instead of going back to the teachers’ colleges, let us move forward. Let government look as the existing curriculum and other aspect of teacher education programmes with a view to fine tune them, to meet the expectations. But more importantly, all those factors that make the teaching profession unattractive and lead to very high rate of attrition must be addressed properly and promptly too. Measures must be put in place to restore the dignity of teachers and teaching profession. The salary and other welfare packages must be good enough to attract new entrants, retain old ones and possibly make the “runaway” teachers to come back. All corrupt tendencies must be eliminated, or at least reduced to the barest minimum in the system. Governors in the North have already declared a state of emergency on education in their states, which is an indication of their determination to face the challenges head on.
Adamu, is of the Department of Biological Science, Usman Danfodio University, Sokoto