Education
Atiku Tasks Nigeria On Quality Learning
Former Vice President
Atiku Abubakar has said that majority of Nigeria educational institutions are not providing quality learning.
He said this could be what caused mass failure in the just released result of the May/June 2014 West Africa Examination Council.
As was the case last year, mass failure was recorded by Nigerian students where only 31.28 percent of the students who sat for the exam obtained credits in five subjects and above, including Mathematics and English Language.
But Atiku said in a statement he personally signed last Thursday in Abuja, that the result should not be a surprise to Nigerians. He said, “No one who has been observing the ongoing attitude towards education in Nigeria will be surprised by this.
“In the past year alone, industrial action by teachers have dominated the news headlines. Primary school teachers in Benue State, for example, embarked on an eight-month strike to demand better conditions and allowances.
“Teachers all over Nigeria remain poorly paid, with several jokes being peddled about how parents are reluctant to allow their daughters marry teachers.”
In addition to poor welfare, he said teachers in the North-East face what he said was a peculiar challenge not common to their colleagues in other parts of the country: security.
He recalled that the National Union of Teachers had claimed that the union had lost about 173 of their members to Boko Haram terrorist attacks.
He added that with the Nigerian government not yet able to adequately protect citizens from these random attacks, that number could easily increase.
He also wondered why teachers in the country have refused to be trained and take examinations.
He said, “There is also the issue of competence of Nigerian teachers. Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State recently lost his seat in a re-election bid with poll results that sent shock waves across the nation, notwithstanding his well-publicised record of high performance.
“One of the reasons political analysts have given for why the people of Ekiti rejected Fayemi is his attempt to improve the quality of teachers in the state by putting each of them through competency tests.
“Teachers in Kwara and Edo States also resisted similar tests. Any employer in Nigeria today knows how challenging it can be to hire staff from the current pool of Nigerian graduates, and trust them to perform excellently without first giving them additional basic training. “Our country’s educational institutions are clearly not providing quality learning. Teachers, like other professionals, need training and re-training.”
Candidates writing entrance examination into Special Senior Science Secondary Schools in Abuja last Saturday.
The River State Commissioner for Education, Dr Peters Nwagor has called on media practitioners in Rivers State to deploy their various communication platforms toward promoting government programmes and policies aimed at achieving sustainable development in the education sector. Dr. Nwagor made the appeal when members of the Etche Ethnic Practicing Journalists (EEPJ) paid him a courtesy visit in Office in Port Harcourt. The Commissioner emphasized the strategic role of the media in shaping public perception, promoting government initiatives, and supporting policies capable of improving the quality of education and human capital development in the state. According to him, constructive media engagement remains essential in creating public awareness on educational reforms, students’ welfare, infrastructural improvements, and other interventions being implemented by the state government. Speaking on the recent appro
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