One recurring decimal in the education sector in Nigeria in the last two decades has to do with the consistent decline in the quality and quantity of professional teachers in the country.
Research shows that despite the importance of teachers to student learning across the country, teacher performance remains low and this cuts across the entire education system.
According to reports, poor teacher performance starts before they enter the classroom. It begins when managers of the education sector systematically allow low-performers to obtain teacher training qualifications.
Only last week, Adamu Adamu, minister of education threatened to throw out teachers who are not qualified, licensed and registered before 2019.
He issued the warning to no fewer than 22,000 would-be teachers across the country writing the Computer Based Teachers Professional Qualifying Examination.
Adamu observed that if teachers were not qualified and properly equipped, their products would also fall short of expectation and ultimately the country will suffer.
Report indicates that for Nigeria to bridge the teachers gap, 39,239 qualified teachers should be engaged annually for Universal Basic Education (UBE) up to 2020 and 80,364 for Adult and non-Formal Education.
In addition, Nigeria needs to increase the size of the teaching workforce in primary education which is pivotal by creating almost one million new primary teaching positions in the next few years.
Those who know in the education sector are of the opinion that one of the factors affecting the quality of talent available in the sector is that teaching has lost its appeal as a path to upward social mobility due to poor remuneration, low teacher quality, and the widespread use of poorly educated contract teachers.
To them, the attractiveness of the teaching profession has implications for attracting younger talent into the profession when the current crop of teachers retires.
Modupe Adefeso-Olateju, an education expert and managing director of the education partnership centre (TEP) observes that to strengthen teacher performance; decision-makers must take a long view by identifying and attracting potentially high-quality teaching talent into the classroom and creating systemic pathways to ensure that they remain and perform well.
“We can identify better teaching talent by raising the entry requirements into the teaching profession, so that higher performers apply says, Adefeso-Olateju adding that test prospective teachers for non-academic qualities essential to students’ learning including enthusiasm, flexibility, and creativity.
To her, “Recruitment policies should allow for non-traditional but high-potential teaching talent to be embedded into the civil service by allowing for professionals with interest in teaching to combine reduced teaching hours with simultaneous participation in teacher training”.
Industry experts maintain that until our teachers are better trained and well-motivated, all efforts to improve the quality of the education system will be severely compromised. In the quest to increase teacher quantity, all manner of persons and all manner of part-time and sandwich programmes are part of the current menu of teacher training.
In striving for the production of quality teachers not just qualified teachers. Educationists are of the opinion that recruited teachers when employed should not go into classrooms without undergoing induction.
On his part, Osaretin Olurotimi, an education researcher in Lagos said to strengthen teacher performance; Government would play a role in implementing solutions to improve teacher quality by raising entry requirements and investing in quality preparation programmes.
Olurotimi further said that community organisations and citizens should take on the role of facilitating collaborations between teachers’ in-school efforts and broader community development imperatives.
According to him, “These will give teachers voice and recognition and ensure that teaching is no longer viewed as a profession for those without better alternatives
“A programme to manage teacher performance must include an investment in the capacity of school administrators to handle an evaluation system appropriately; deliver feedback; discover training needs; and design or customise reward or disciplinary incentives for the teachers,” he said.
While industry experts in the education space acknowledged that Nigeria’s education sector is faced with a plethora of problems such as underfunding, deteriorating infrastructure/equipment, dearth of quality teachers, they however are of the view that with the right collaboration between all stakeholders in the sector the threatening effect of teacher’s capacity would be resolved.
