ADDRESSING SHORTAGE OF TEACHERS

The states should invest more on basic education

The Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) Hamid Bobboyi has once again drawn attention to the deficiencies in the country’s basic education sector. At a one-day partnership dialogue with the organised private sector on the implementation of the UBE programme in Lagos recently, Bobboyi complained aloud of the learning poverty in primary schools chiefly as a result of shortage of qualified teachers. He said the country needs an additional 194,876 qualified teachers to fill the existing gaps. Besides, the nation is in dire need of 907,769 new classrooms at the primary school level and 200,085 classrooms at the Junior Secondary School level, stressing that the poor condition of classrooms cut across all geo-political zones.

Indeed, the UBE boss was re-echoing the widespread concerns earlier expressed by many stakeholders, including the Teachers Registration

Council of Nigeria (TRCN). The Registrar of TRCN, Josiah Ajiboye, had noted that the shortage was more pronounced in the rural areas, arguing that the development is worsening educational inequality. “The availability and quality of qualified teachers are crucial factors in ensuring students receive quality education”, he said. The over 47 million pupils currently enrolled in 171,000 private and public primary and junior secondary schools across the country are taught by some 354,650 teachers, many of whom are unqualified.

The problem is exacerbated by the non-recruitment of teachers by many state governments. About 18 states have not deemed it fit to recruit teachers in the last five years, even with about 20 per cent surge in classroom enrolments. Some of the states, according to National Union of Teachers (NUT) are Abia, Bayelsa, Bauchi, Benue, Cross River, Ebonyi, Edo, Gombe, Jigawa, Kano, Kogi, Ogun, Plateau, Rivers, Taraba, and Zamfara. The result of inadequate recruitment of teachers in face of growing population of school children is aggravated teacher-pupil ratio, leading to overcrowded classrooms and reduced attention for individual pupils.

The Education Board Chairman of Zamfara State Hon. Adamu Jangebe, once revealed to a children advocacy group, Save the Children, the acute shortage of primary school teachers. He lamented that no fewer than 300 public primary schools in the state were manned by a single teacher each, while many more schools in rural communities had no teacher at all, leaving the children to their own devices. Unfortunately, Zamfara has many states competing with it, particularly in the north, on the neglect of public education at the most basic level. 

The immediate past governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai at one time resorted to mass sacking of more than 21,000 teachers in the state’s primary education board on account of incompetence. The lack of qualified teachers is accentuated in many rural communities by other unattractive learning environment. Classrooms are an essential commodity with the result that children study under trees. In the urban centres that have the luxury of being provided with some classrooms, many of them are dilapidated with leaking roofs and cracked walls.

There is a consensus that the deplorable state of education in the country is traceable to the fact that politicians do not care about fixing the sector because they can afford to send their children to posh private schools. Many state governments have refused to take teachers’ professional development as a priority despite collecting 10 per cent of UBEC grants for such purposes. Many conveniently abandon the hefty sum from UBEC because of the 50 per cent matching grant that they are expected to provide for projects.

Yet the provision of quality and affordable education is one of the sacred duties of government since they provide the needed human capital necessary for development. The states should reorder their priorities and pay more attention to primary education in terms of provision of basic infrastructure, teachers and teaching tools. This is an emergency.