We‘ll develop basic school teachers’ competency – NCCE board chair
Board Chairman of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Muhammadu Maigari Dingyadi, says better conditions would be created to improve the quality of teaching in primary schools. Teachers are facing serious problems in classrooms. What plans do you have toward improving teacher education? This commission is charged, among many other things, with […]
Board Chairman of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Muhammadu Maigari Dingyadi, says better conditions would be created to improve the quality of teaching in primary schools.
Teachers are facing serious problems in classrooms. What plans do you have toward improving teacher education?
This commission is charged, among many other things, with the responsibility of ensuring that we advise the president through the minister on how best to improve standard and quality of teacher education in this country. We are all aware that there are lots of problems in this sector and it is our responsibility to ensure that we face these challenges head-on and try to see that we make teacher education better than what we met. This can only be done through the collective hard work of the board members and the entire staff of the commission.
We have a vibrant workforce from what I have seen so far, that will assist us in producing the best teachers at NCE level to manage our basic education. If you don’t have qualified teachers at the basic education sector, the whole education system won’t be perfect. So, we need to make sure that basic education is properly articulated and managed through well-trained NCE teachers.
There were very good teachers in the past, who dealt with multiple student personality and you can ask a primary school pupil to write a letter for you. You can converse with them in English language because they were very fluent in it. But now, if you engage a secondary school leaver you will be highly disappointed. In fact, even some of the teachers with NCE certificates, you discover that they are not the best type of material that one should have at that level.
The falling standard of education must have contributed to what you see and it is the responsibility of all stakeholders to work together as a team to improve the situation. This is our primary responsibility and we are determined to ensure that we produce high-quality teachers comparable to their counterparts anywhere in the world.
Most of the Colleges of Education don’t have good facilities to improve student outcomes while many lack adequate teachers. How would you deal with these challenges?
The teacher training colleges are of different categories; we have the federal colleges that are directly under this commission, state and private colleges. We have polytechnics that are teaching NCE programmes. Provision of facilities is largely dependent on availability of funds and as far as the colleges under the Federal Ministry of Education are concerned, a lot of attention is being given to them to ensure that they meet the entire accreditation requirement that we have. The state colleges are being funded by state governments and we are appealing to states to give the necessary funding to their colleges to qualify for accreditation.
You are developing new strategies for quality teaching at basic schools but a look at rural schools shows that teachers do not want to stay there. How are you preparing the rural teacher?
I mentioned at our inaugural meeting that a motivated teacher is actually essential to a successful classroom and I drew the attention of the commission to the need to make teachers stay motivated just like any other civil servant. This could be done through the provision of welfare services that are affordable and provided by law to the teachers. Teachers should be elevated from one job position to another at the right time and those that require commendation should be rewarded while those that commit major offence should be punished.
We are making every effort to ensure that we have motivated and highly qualified teachers at the basic schools.
The commission is said to be facing difficulties in carrying out its major function of accrediting courses at the colleges due to lack of funds. Won’t this delay the production of quality teachers?
The commission has fairly adequate budget to perform its functions including accreditation of courses in the colleges. It is true; we are facing funding problem just like other public agencies and ministries but we will step up all necessary actions to have reasonable and fair funding to ensure that our programmes are not affected.
Some of the retired officials of the commission are grumbling about non-payment of benefits. Has the matter come to your knowledge?
I just started; it will come to my knowledge, I believe. We set up committees to look into problems and the establishment committee will handle that. We shall have all these records in our next meeting and we will do something about them. You are aware this place hasn’t got a board for a long time and so, many things have been hanging waiting for us to come.
What is your expectation about teacher education in the next few years?
It is too early to answer that but my plan is to develop the most vibrant and qualified teachers at basic schools. I am aware the situation is not as good as we want it but we will hold on to the ‘change mantra’ of the government to improve education quality and learning effectiveness.