THE Federal Government has disclosed plans to make university first degree as the minimum teaching qualification in Nigeria.

 

Minister of Education, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau, who gave this hint on Thursday, while receiving Finnish Ambassador to Nigeria, Pirjo Suomela-Chowdhury, said the Federal Government would explore all measures to restore the respect, dignity and status of teachers in the country.

 

Suomela-Chowdhury, had told the minister that all teachers in Finland had minimum of Masters Degree and that teaching is a highly competitive profession because of huge interest by many qualified people.

 

The minister, who said the target of the Federal Government was to make first degree minimum teaching qualification, noted that from 1980 the minimum teaching qualification to teach was National Certificate in Education (NCE).

 

He said this could be increased to first degree, adding that currently, there are a number of graduates teaching in primary schools in the country.

 

 

Shekarau, recalled that the country was able to get over the practice in the past, where primary school leavers were engaged to teach, saying “the level was raised to Teacher Grade 3 in the 60’s and later on in early 70’s, it was minimum of Grade 2, and this was later phased out in early 80’s to minimum of NCE.

 

“Gradually we will get there. We hope that a day will come when all our schools, including pre-primary, will be handled by university graduates.

 

The rate at which our universities are increasing shows, soon, that will be our target. We have a lot to learn from each other, regardless of the factor of the size. The challenges are the same,” he said.

 

Shekarau added that, apart from the general agenda of government for improving access and quality of education, his particular concern as minister was to improve the quality of teachers.

 

He said: “We must continuously increase the number of teachers, improve the quality of teachers, improve the condition of teacher training institutions and continuously review the curriculum of teacher education to make sure it catches up with the challenges, address the issues of teachers’ welfare and job security.”

 

He said the Federal Government would soon come up with a proposal to encourage special scholarship awards by all tiers of government to students from secondary schools who want to study education in universities and teacher training institutions.

 

He disclosed that the Federal Government would soon convoke a national teachers’ summit to discuss on how to raise the bar of quality of teachers in Nigeria.

 

The Minister stressed that no nation could rise above the level of quality of its education system with teachers as the key driving force.

 

He said even though the Federal Government was yet to hit the 26 per cent budget allocation to education, there have been remarkable increases in budgetary allocation to the education in line with the transformation agenda of the current administration.

BY: tribune