The recent sacking of 21800 teachers by Governor Nasiru El-Rufa’i has generated a lot of debate on teacher quality and performance in the print, electronic and social media. Most Nigerians were shocked when it was revealed that the teachers were sacked because they failed a competency test meant for primary four pupils!
One of the positive outcomes of this unprecedented action is that it placed teacher quality at the centre of public discourse on how the educational system has failed to meet the nation’s goals and needs. The fact that President Muhammadu Buhari also spoke on the matter and supported Kaduna state’s decision to sack over 21000 teachers means that the issue will continue to be debated in the media for a long time.
Public opinion is divided as to whether the decision to sack them was the right one. The NUT for example, argued that by sacking them, government has unjustifiably denied them their means of livelihood. Losing one’s means of livelihood is a painful thing and to a considerable extent dehumanising. But there is the need to balance our compassion and empathy for the teachers with our obligation to educate our children who for decades have been denied quality education by these incompetent teachers. The real victims of this tragedy are the pupils not the teachers.
Those who argue that the teachers should not be sacked and that they should be re-trained instead, should tell Nigerians why we should continue to mortgage the future livelihood of hundreds of thousands of children in order to protect the jobs of these teachers. Why should the teachers be retained when we know that their pupils are not learning? Should we live in denial and continue to peddle the fantasy that Nigeria will by 2030 be among the top 20 economies when teachers cannot deliver the curriculum because they are incompetent and or are untrained? How can you train them to NCE level (which is the minimum teaching qualification) if their literacy and numeracy skills are lower than that of primary four pupils? I commend Governor El Rufa’i for taking this bold decision and hope that other states with a similar problem will learn from Kaduna state’s experience. However, the government should ensure that all the sacked teachers are paid all their entitlements and sustained efforts are made to help them benefit from the many existing schemes for job creation, setting up small scale businesses etc.
The problem posed by unqualified and incompetent teachers may be traced back to 1976 when the Obasanjo regime launched the UPE scheme without ensuring that there were enough teachers for the geometric increase in pupil enrolments that followed. It was only after the scheme was launched that the so-called UPE Teacher Training colleges (TTCs) and NTI were established to address the shortfalls in teacher supply. Worse of all a significant proportion of those admitted into the TTCs were not the best and the brightest but the dregs of the system who could not gain admission into post-primary institutions. This led to the de-professionalisation of teaching which worsened in the last two decades because of corruption and the dominance of a patronage system of teacher recruitment and deployment.
The 2016 reports of DFID-funded research in three states in the North West concluded that: “while recruitment is officially structured around a state-based process of formal examinations and interviews, in practice it is dominated by LGAs and influenced by pressures from local political elites.” LGAs illegally recruited and continue to recruit secondary school dropouts, semi literates and stark illiterates to “teach” in primary schools or more appropriately to collect salary without doing anything. Reports of the Baseline studies and Composite surveys carried out in different parts of the country and funded by DFID in 2014 and 2015 show very clearly the devastating effects of the subversion of the formal processes of recruitment through rampant corruption and patronage.
According to the reports, in some of the states “….only 4% of pupils in grade 3 were able to demonstrate basic English literacy skills that are expected by the end of grade 2, 35% displayed emergent literacy associated with completion of the grade 1 curriculum, while the largest group, 60% of pupils, had fallen behind by at least two full grades, meaning they do not demonstrate skills beyond the level expected of pre-school children”. How about their performance in numeracy? The reports indicate that: “the vast majority of pupils had also fallen considerably behind curriculum expectations in numeracy. The baseline survey found that less than 4% of grade 3 pupils demonstrate basic numeracy skills expected at the end of grade 2 and 13% demonstrate emergent numeracy associated with completion of grade 1, and strikingly, more than 83% of pupils had fallen behind by at least two full grades”. These findings are attributable to the fact that the vast majority of the teachers lack the requisite knowledge and skills for the effective delivery of the curriculum.
Next Steps:The first thing to do is to develop a coherent and feasible plan for teacher reform that goes beyond sacking teachers and focuses on the complete overhaul of the existing structures and systems of the governance of basic education aimed at eliminating the high level of patronage and corruption associated with teacher recruitment and deployment. This will ensure that only those who are qualified are recruited to teach. It will also significantly reduce the rural-urban disparity in teacher supply, particularly if accompanied with appropriate incentives. The reforms should also include the implementation of a clearly articulated plan on how to improve the salary and condition of service of teachers so that the brightest persons are attracted to the profession. Finally, teacher training should be demand driven. The current disconnect between SUBEB’s needs and the graduate output of the colleges should be addressed immediately. If the reforms are to succeed, all stakeholders should be part of it and have a strong sense of ownership of the reforms.
Dr. Umar wrote this piece from DFID, Abuja.
