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By Prof. Ibrahim A. Kolo
The threat to sack incompetent teachers did not start with the recent Kaduna State experience. Similar attempts to purge incompetent teachers out of the system by having them undergo “aptitude/competency tests” to determine their suitability as “teachers” in Kwara, Edo and Ekiti States drew similar protests a few years back. In Kwara State, a structured comprehensive capacity development programme was put up to engage the teachers before determining their re-trainability for continued retention or their un-trainable status for determining their disengagement.
In the Edo State, the Comrade Governor of labour extraction (Adams Oshiomole) had a running battle with the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) even when it was evident that many teachers lacked basic reading and numeracy skills. Indeed, the insistence on administering the competency tests on serving teachers led the loss of the Governorship seat of Dr. Kayode Fayemi when teachers mobilized to vote for “stomach infrastructure” as against laying the foundation for quality education.
Even in Kaduna State, the recent exercise wasn’t the first time teachers will be subjected to any form of competency tests. The bubble finally burst the week past when Governor Nasir El-Rufai threatened to sack over 22, 000 teachers on account of having performed below the standard adjudged to be the baseline requirement in the “achievement tests” originally meant for their primary four pupils. Since then, two extreme hard-line stances have emerged with the poor “teachers” at the receiving end: On one end is the Governor who is adamant that the “teachers” would have to go (and he has his supporters cheering him on); and at the other end is the Labour Congress which is threatening to shut down Kaduna State if the Governor tries to make good the sack threat.
It appears we all suddenly have awakened to the decay in the education system which we have all helped to pile up over the years whilst ignoring calls by concerned educationists to comprehensively address the rot. To the now threatened teachers, it is not so much who blinks first, but the loss of employment legally (or otherwise) obtained; loss of legitimate (or otherwise also) source of income; and loss of years of service engaged in by employer. The issues most commentators (on the status of teachers; the teaching profession; and teachers’ career and perception of teachers by the Nigerian society) often hardly address are the genesis of the watering down of standards and quality of Teacher Education and the “barstadization” of the teaching profession in Nigeria. After all, the teachers now labelled unsuitable did not jump into the service themselves. They were engaged by state government officials who hitherto treated the Education Sector with so much contempt. And obviously the “teacher” has to pay for it.
Following the furor generated by the reversal to status-quo-ante of the four Universities of Education created with the elevation of the four oldest Advanced Teachers Colleges -ATCs (now Federal Colleges of Education – FCEs) with a view to addressing quality teacher production, not a few commentators wrote to call for the need to address Teacher Education as one of the fundamental issues requiring to be redressed if the collapsed standards of education (including Teacher Education standards) are to be redeemed. Indeed, the genesis of the poor quality of teachers in the Education Sector today in Nigeria started with the conversion of the ATCs into COEs (not the scrapping of the old Teachers Colleges as some believe) for the award of the Nigeria Certificate of Education (NCE).
In fact, it was not so much the change of nomenclature of the ATCs to COEs, but the NCE curriculum which was designed then to strike a balance between academic preparation of teacher trainees (envisaged to eventually proceed for University degrees in Teacher Education) vis-à-vis the pedagogical and practical content structure of the curriculum. The misstep also arose from the abandoning of the core traditions of teacher training for emphasis on academic preparation in the COEs. Today, no one seems to remember that the COEs and even the Faculties of Education or Institutes of Education of the universities were supposed to have adopted and upgraded the core teacher training values of teacher professional pedagogue, tutelage and mentorship (values which are completely now lacking in the teacher training programmes).
Since the switch from ATCs to COEs in 1976, the curricular structure in use in these teacher training institutions has been so watered down that Teacher Education quality and professionalism came to lose the standard expected of quality teachers at all levels of the country’s Education System. More seriously today is the fact that the COEs, Faculties and Institutes of Education have been unable to reinvent their curriculum and their own teacher professional core values and capacities to suit the content and pedagogue requirements for the reviewed Basic Education subjects. Hence, most teaching subjects on offer in the COEs (Economics, Geography, History, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Business Education, Home Economics, Auto-mechanics, Wood Works and Carpentry, etc.) are not directly subjects on the Basic Education curriculum of the country.
The universities have also abandoned the enriched three years B. Ed Programme of Teacher education. Matters have not been helped by the double major subject combinations (Agricultural Science, Physical and Health Education – PHE, Integrated Science, Business Education, etc.) of most programmes in the COEs. Even the Primary Education Studies (PES) that should have been further re-invented to suit the present Basic Education curriculum began to be made two subject combinations (such as PES/Social Studies – PES/SOS, PES/English, etc.
The lumped up subjects combination have been too content loaded for ill-prepared secondary school leavers of recent years. The situation amounted eventually to these institutions not producing well trained teachers who posses both the content mastery knowledge and related pedagogical skills for the current Basic Education subjects (Civics Education, Basic Science, Basic Technology and Computer, Reading, Writing, etc.) as prescribed by the Nigeria Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC).
Further compounding the problem of teacher preparation (pre-service training) is the lowering of requirements for admission into the COEs and the practice of thrusting students who are not found worthy of offer of admission into non-education courses into the Faculties of Education in the Universities. While the situation in the COEs permits the poorest candidates (UTME cut-off of 100 and three credits) to enter the teaching profession, the latter makes the universities to produce unwilling and also weak graduates for the teaching profession. As much as these factors should not be any excuses for any teacher to so grossly underperform in achievement tests meant for primary school pupils, the truth still remains that most teachers in the Nigerian School System today are the academically weakest graduates and those who have simply resigned to their fate that the teacher does not need to self improve to master the subjects they find themselves teaching in the schools.
As if the NCE and University degree curricular defects in teacher professional training were not enough miscalculation, the teaching career has been the most assaulted in terms of recruitment, welfare and adherence to professional requirements. Since the 1990s and over two decades of the saturation of the Teaching Service with knowledge deficient and pedagogically ill-trained teachers, particularly those from the COEs, the profession became an all-comers one in which just persons (barely literate secondary school leavers who had the “connections”, wives and of elected officials and politicians particularly at the Local Government levels, holders of fake or unearned teacher education certificates, etc.) were engaged all over the country. The States Civil Service Commission (CSCs), Ministries of Education (MOEs), Teachers’ Service Boards/Commissions – TSB/Cs (where they existed), State Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs), and the Local Governments (LGs) never helped matters as recruitments into the teaching service were hardly done on the basis of expected criteria of demonstrable teaching professional capacities and competencies or even the verification of credentials to ascertain the authenticity of certificates.
In many states, Local Government Education Secretaries were alleged to have “sold” teaching appointment letters to the highest bidders. More unfortunately has been the lip service paid to Quality Assurance Policies adopted and the Agencies established at the Federal level and in some states. The teaching vocation terrain became over time dominated by “hardly baked’ and unqualified teachers. There is no doubt that most of the over 22, 000 “teachers” Governor El-Rufai” is poised to sack are products and by-products of this unregulated recruitments and engagement of teachers across Nigeria. Certainly, these categories of teachers, irrespective of the tests administered in Kaduna State deserve to be given the boots.
There is no gainsaying the fact that most teachers over the years who found themselves trapped in the teaching vocation have not only been ill-prepared, but are bereft of any ideas about professional expectations of teachers. Not even the establishment of agencies like the National Teachers Institute (NTI), the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), and the enactment of the National Teacher Education Policy has helped in addressing the mess that “teachers” and the profession have been thrown into. In essence, the regulatory agencies of Teacher Education and the Profession have hardly lived up to their expectations in ensuring quality teacher status for the Nigerian Education System. For example, while NTI is expected solely to have developed and put to use evidence-based structured and unstructured in-service training programmes for serving teachers across the country, the Institute in the past over two decades has focused more on pre-service and collaborative capacity strengthening exercises much of which were mostly in the form of mass trainings which had little or no efficacy values for improving capacities of teachers.
The NTI NCE Programme by Distance Learning (DLS) equally had little quality assurance regulation for ensuring quality teacher production. The NTI needs to develop teacher professional tutelage training programmes rather than dissipate resources on pre-service programmes which the Colleges of Education and NCCE are mandated to carry out. Until very recently, the TRCN also simply issued professional Teacher Certificates with little or no recourse to verification of institutional qualifications. At a point, the TRCN also started the process of mere ceremonial induction of graduating students in the Faculties of Education and Colleges of Education as pre-requisite for the issuance professional certificate. TRCN was also to start the much theoretically loaded Professional Diploma Education (PDE) rather than concentrate on the strengthening the Mandatory Teachers Continuous Capacity Development it developed for itself.
Good a thing, the TRCN has now started administering professional competency tests for determining the professional certification worthiness of teachers. It will be important for TRCN to follow up the tests with portfolio-based professional mentorship assessment programmes as part of the professional competency and capacity assessment prerequisite to professional certification of Nigerian teachers.
For the Colleges of Education and NCCE, it has become apparent that the new curricular structure with emphasis on Basic Education content mastery and related pedagogue, has to be put to use immediately as the current one in use in most colleges for now is only turning out the category of teachers under threat of sack by Governor El-Rufai.
Corruption and professional malpractices are also known to have since found their way into Teacher Education and Teaching Career making in Nigeria. Stories abound of students being able to buy statement of results from COEs; lecturers engaging in “sorting” or bribery (in cash or kind) for marks and results in Teacher Training Programmes; bribe for promotion in the Ministries of Education; illicit payments for issuance of so-called statements of attendance to NCE students who are unable to score the required grade points for progression or graduation; etc. There is no doubt that majority of the teachers now under Governor El-Rufai’s hammer belong to the group of “teachers” who obtained their “qualifications and certificates” by this corrupt and professional malpractice means.
With the situation painted here, it should not surprise any pundits that more than half of the teaching personnel in most states in Nigeria would fail achievement tests meant for their pupils. It is, however, important to note that it is not just the possession of knowledge of subject matter (as focused upon by the achievement tests used in Kaduna State) that makes a professionally competent teacher.
As the TRCN minimum standards require, knowledge of teaching methodology and professional resourcefulness of teachers are the other critical factors expected of a professional teacher. These other components of the professional teacher are not assessable by written or CBT tests. They are expected to be assessed more by practical hands-on procedures in portfolio tools. This is why sacking of the teachers who failed the tests as in the Kaduna case with a view to engaging “new” ones may only end up amounting to a circus show. The Kaduna SUBEB is already putting up a volte-face by toiling with the idea that those who fail may reapply for re-engagement.
In my candid opinion, a systemic failure in Teacher Education and Professionalism has been thrust on the Education System in Nigeria and addressing the situation demands more of structured, coordinated and regulated in-depth approaches of redressing the pre-service training programmes, as well as the mandatory in-service training and capacity development programmes for the restoration of professionalism in teaching. Niger State under Governor Abubakar Sani Bello has put in place a Committee to address the challenge in this context. Some suggestions could help in the present situation that teachers, Government and the society (for it not the problem of teachers alone) find themselves.
In the immediate term, there is the need to urgently empower the regulatory bodies, particularly the TRCN to carry out an appraisal of the capacities and competencies of all serving teachers with a view to determining the authenticity of their certificates and potentials as professional teachers. Beyond the Aptitude/Competency Test recently introduced by TRCN, it is important that a Teacher Professional Tutelage and Mentorship Scheme (TPT&MS) be immediately introduced as follow up to redressing the re-trainable teachers to be identified from the lot currently employed as teachers who do not have the expected professional capacities and competencies. There are hundreds of thousands of retired and still very capable teachers available for engagement as Professional Teacher Mentors.
The TRCN should take up the task of immediately developing the suggested Portfolio-Based Mentorship Assessment Programme (PMAP) to drive the remediation process. Those to be subsequently identified as un-trainable from the TPT&MS shall have to leave the teaching profession. No one can blame the Kaduna State Governor for the decision to sack teachers who cannot pass at appreciable threshold the achievement tests meant for their pupils. We can only fault the use of the achievement test (tagged aptitude/competency test) as the sole criterion for determining their expected professional competencies.
Secondly, as a medium term measure, the regulatory bodies have to become directly more alive to their mandates. The NCCE needs to up its teacher education pre-service academic and professional supervisory role over the COEs. This has to start with having the Colleges adopt the new NCE curriculum which puts emphasis more on mastery of the Basic Education subjects; the relevant pedagogue (for Early Childhood Education, Lower Basic, Middle Basic, and Upper Basic/Junior Secondary Education teaching specialty); and structured practicum, micro-teaching and professional teaching tutelage experiences.
The NCCE also has to come down hard on COEs with over-subscribed accredited regular programmes and over-proliferated long vacation and outreach programmes which have only further watered down pre-service teacher professional preparation, rather than strengthen Teacher Trainee Education. Indeed, in my opinion, COEs should not engage in long vacation and outreach programmes as these are the avenues where unqualified candidates get admitted and where no serious teaching and training is done for candidates to obtain the NCE certificate. In a country with an already collapsed standard of education, long vacation and outreach contacts as they are presently run cannot be any reliable medium of producing quality teachers for restoring the standards of education to levels desirable.
Thirdly and very importantly for sustainability purposes, states have to set up professional teacher in-service and capacity development institutes as well as Teachers’ Service Boards/Commissions to work with either TRCN or NTI on structured re-training programmes based on Cluster Schools Multi-Level Mentorships and a Teacher Education and Professional Quality Assurance System. Niger State has taken this initiative already in collaboration with TRCN and has even started a pre-service professional teacher career orientation and incubation centre as a long term measure for stemming the poor quality of teachers produced for the education sector.
Above all these is the issue of teachers’ remuneration and welfare which is the basis for attracting the best brains to the teaching profession. Till date, many states are unwilling to implement the Teachers Salary Scale (TSS) as agreed upon by NUT and Government at all levels. States that have set up the Teachers Service Boards or Commissions (TSB/Cs) have done so more to score political points than empowering the Commissions to meet the welfare and related needs of teachers as professionals. In my opinion, the UBEC, SUBEBs and TSB/Cs in conjunction with TRCN can be mandated to work out computerized platforms and solutions for the credentialing and documentation of all professional teachers across the country with a view to taking over their salaries payment and capacities development responsibilities. This to me will be better than the present situation where UBEC and SUBEBs focus on capital projects which are hardly visible even with billions of naira expended from the joint funding arrangement as provided for in the extant Law. After all, many states are unable to keep up with matching funds which have left billions of funds un-accessed with UBEC. The proposed arrangement will make all verified and certified professional teachers Federal Staff earning the TSS in which ever part of the country they are. States which do not have verified qualified and TRCN certified teachers of various grades should be prepared to source from the pool to be generated by TRCN and the State Teachers Institutes or leave their schools with unqualified teachers at their own detriment.
With ICT solutions now in the vogue and with the Treasury Single Account (TSA) in place, it will be more helpful for UBEC to engage directly in visible interventions through payment of salaries in support of Basic Education broadly across the country than the present arrangement where the Commission is unable to trace capital project points where SUBEBs make claim to. And with the earlier suggested TPT&MS to be carried out in collaboration with TRCN, certified teachers can be captured for the cluster schools multi-level mentorship retraining programme. It will be up to the states to build schools for their people or to ignore the responsibility at the peril of the political actors.
Conclusively, it is apparent that the situation of Teacher Education and the Teaching Profession in Nigeria is so deplorable that only renewed and radical measures can help to redress the situation. Except the country musters the will to address the challenges frontally, we are likely to continue to live with a diluted Teacher Education and despicable Teaching Profession driving our already collapsed education system.
Prof. Kolo is former Vice Chancellor, Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida University, Lapai, Niger State.
