‘Capable teachers’ shortfall bane to education development’
Ibrahim Shekarau, Minister of Education has disclosed that High schools’ students in Nigeria usually record mass failure in external examinations particularly in West African Secondary School Certificate Examinations (WASSCE) and National Examinations Council (NECO) due to acute shortage of qualified English and Mathematics teachers in Nigerian schools.
This, according to the minister, has further troubled the quality of education and contributed a marginal decline in the performance of candidates of such examinations since “details of the May/June 2014 WASSCE result indicated that only 529,425 candidates, representing 31.28 percent of the 1.7 million candidates who wrote the examinations obtained credits in five subjects and above, including English Language and Mathematics.
The minister, who in conjunction with Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun state, declared open the Ministerial Session at the 60th National Council on Education (NCE) Meeting held in Abeokuta recently, lamented dearth of qualified teachers in core subjects offering in Nigerian secondary schools, adding: “ there is no doubt that we have challenge in among others, the availability of teachers of Mathematics and English Language.”
He however, revealed that the Federal Government, through the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), had introduced in September this year, e-curriculum which “would ensure that teachers, learners and other relevant stakeholders have easy online access to the prescribed national curriculum in all subjects.”
Similarly, the minister decried the high level of damage the Boko Haram insurgency had done to the Northern education, especially the North Eastern part of the country as it constitutes a grave danger to education in the affected areas, saying all efforts must be directed at overcoming the security challenges for normalcy to return to the affected areas.
“The prevailing insecurity situation in the north eastern part of Nigeria has disrupted academic life in a number of our public schools. Nigerian educational institutions and students have become endangered due to attacks.
“We can no longer afford to underestimate the need to map out coordinated action plan for our institutions to always be on security alert. There is the need for us to continually review security issues in our institutions so as to protect our children from harm.”
But, Governor Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun state, in his welcome address, stressed significance of education to the development of any nation, saying: ”it is generally known that a nation that attaches the desired importance to its educational development achieves considerable socio-economic advancement to the benefit of its citizenry and contribute significantly to their well being.”
“This is why countries of the world that are economically backward are also the most educationally disadvantaged. It is therefore important that all efforts geared towards advancing the educational development of our nation must be supported by all.”
Remi Feyisipo