We need curriculum that allows teachers study choice courses – Prof. Shafi’u

Training of teachers is one of the challenges facing Nigeria’s education sector, what is your take on this?Cancellation of teachers’ training colleges in Nigeria had really affected the teaching profession negatively, and to a large extent affected education generally. I could recall that the cancellation was based on two reasons. First, it was argued that […]

Training of teachers is one of the challenges facing Nigeria’s education sector, what is your take on this?
Cancellation of teachers’ training colleges in Nigeria had really affected the teaching profession negatively, and to a large extent affected education generally. I could recall that the cancellation was based on two reasons. First, it was argued that whoever holds a Grade II certificate is not expected to go anywhere except teaching, and this had created disparity between those with Grade II certificates and those with WAEC or SSCE.
Those with other secondary school certificates were being absorbed to work in different sectors like banks, companies, hospitals and many other places but Grade II holders were prevented from doing so.
Second, in Grade II, if a student fails one subject, he is a Grade II failure and must repeat all papers and pass before gaining admission into higher schools. Even in teaching profession, a Grade II failure receives less salary if compared with that of his counterpart Grade II passer. In secondary education, a student may fail two or three subjects but he will still gain admission into university and other higher colleges.
These problems had forced parents to prevent their children from attending teachers’ training colleges in a bid to run away from such. Going by this, government ordered that teachers’ training colleges be cancelled. This has affected the teaching profession because students go for teaching line only when they did not get admission into universities to study non education.
Many states of the federation have this problem and most of them are regretting, and ready to restore the Grade II programme. Taking our discipline, Arabic, as an example, right from the scratch, we were trained to be teachers but the cancellation crippled our efforts, because we have to cancel many teaching courses and resort to secondary school courses.
This is a big problem, because there are many students who graduated as Arabic students but could not speak Arabic since there is no practical that would cover the oral aspect. This is not restricted to Arabic, but it has affected all other languages. Therefore, there is every need for re-examining our curriculum and come up with a new one that will contain teacher training right from junior secondary to senior secondary school through university. The new system should allow trained teachers study any course of their choice including medicine, engineering, pharmaceutical sciences among others.
If you argue that a trained teacher should not study professional courses, then who taught the professional doctors, pharmacists, engineers etc? When professional teachers are giving the chance, very soon we will begin to see teacher education science, teacher education arts, teacher education in other fields; at the end we will have professional teachers in different fields.
It may be argued that the government has replaced Grade II with National Certificate in Education (NCE)…..?
To answer this question, we need to trace how NCE came into being. In the early 1960s, the system of education then made provision for training of Grade III teachers to teach in primary schools. Later, the colleges started producing Grade II teachers and this led to increase in schools and brilliant students and this led to the introduction of three different forms of colleges that include Secondary School, Teachers’ Training College (TTC) and Business Apprenticeship Training Centre (BATC). NCE was then introduced to pave way for Grade II teachers to further their education. By extension, NCE was meant to be a training ground for teachers to prepare themselves for admission into universities, and this had really assisted Nigeria in producing qualitative professional teachers.
In this part of the country, the Federal College of Education, Zaria is the mother of NCE programme. In those days, any teacher that obtained Grade II and went to FCE and subsequently went to university will be a sound professional teacher of repute.
You described FCE, Zaria as mother of NCE, but the institution was recently converted to university, so where does that place NCE studies?
Well, for me converting the school to university is a welcome development, because other schools would take over the role of producing NCE graduates while FCE, Zaria would remain as the mother by producing the competent lecturers or teachers that would be teaching at the institutions that would be producing the NCE graduates.
Therefore, the federal government, especially federal ministry of education, deserves our commendation for the foresight, because the decision will definitely aid teaching profession in Nigeria and beyond.
Which institutions will be producing the NCE graduates?
Talking about other schools that can take over the role of producing NCE graduates, recently a team from National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) was at Ameer Shehu College for Advanced Studies, Zaria for accreditations of some NCE courses. The college has been running diploma courses in education since 2003 after accreditation by the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.
Under that arrangement, Ameer Shehu Idris has been running diploma courses in education subjects like Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Hausa, English, French and religious studies. The college had graduated many Diploma students right from inception to date and some of our products are now lecturers at ABU and other Nigerian universities.
This was why NCCE was invited to come and accredit the college to enable us run courses on National Certificate in Education (NCE), aside our usual diploma courses. We feel that running the NCE programmes would be Ameer Shehu Idris’ contribution in taking the teaching profession to greater heights in Nigeria, especially in northern Nigeria. Remember, NCE is now the minimum qualification for teaching in primary and secondary schools in Nigeria, and since FCE, Zaria is now a university, we feel that out people need an alternative.
After that accreditation, the college now has approval to run NCE like English/Hausa, English/Social Studies, Arabic/Hausa, Mathematics/Physics, Physics/Chemistry as well as special courses like childhood education In addition to that, JAMB has selected Ameer Shehu Idris College to be on its list. In essence, students will now be getting admission into the college through JAMB. Since FCE, Zaria had been upgraded to university of education; our children don’t need to go to Kano, Kafanchan or other places for NCE programmes. We are teachers and we would continue to do everything within our powers to improve teaching as a profession.