Recruiting 500,000 teachers may be step in right direction

In the last two decades, Nigeria’s education system has deteriorated very  badly to the extent that we have almost completely outsourced the provision of basic primary education to private schools’ owners across the country. This has unfortunately impacted negatively on the ability of children from low socio-economic backgrounds and other disadvantaged households to access educational […]

In the last two decades, Nigeria’s education system has deteriorated very  badly to the extent that we have almost completely outsourced the provision of basic primary education to private schools’ owners across the country. This has unfortunately impacted negatively on the ability of children from low socio-economic backgrounds and other disadvantaged households to access educational opportunities in the country. This is why the plan to hire half a million primary school teachers should be viewed as a step in the right direction. 
Although, according to the 2013 Annual Report of the Federal Ministry of Education (FME), Nigeria is not in crisis in terms of teacher availability at the basic educational level, it is yet to attain the target national teacher-pupil ratio of 1:40. For example, Malaysia is reported to have a reasonable pupil-teacher ratio of 13 pupils to a teacher. Ethiopia has also expanded its teachers’ workforce by an average of 11 per cent per annual since 1999. For Nigeria, there were only 666,288 registered teachers nationwide in the primary education system averaging (as at the end of 2013) a national average of 1:57). At any rate, given our fertility rate and growing children population, more pupils will still need extra primary school teachers.
What the foregoing implicitly presupposes is the existence of gap in manpower for basic education which is expected to be filled up by the soon to be hired 500,000 graduates and NCE teachers. The proposed intervention will help the Buhari administration to address the high rate of unemployment particularly among the youth.
More importantly, the special intervention should be well anchored and methodical in implementation in order to impact positively on access to (and quality of) basic education in the country. Rather than being the usual top down Abuja thing, it is important that all relevant authorities in charge of basic education at all levels be involved in mapping out strategies in order to achieve better intervention outcome.
Tunde Salman, a Budget Advocacy enthusiast, is the Team Leader, Good Governance Monitoring Team 08094609566.