By Anthony Adgidzi, Akwanga

  A 3-day workshop organized by the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) for education experts in the country was held at the College of Education, Akwanga recently.

The workshop was aimed at producing a system for monitoring and evaluating the academic standard  of all colleges of education in the country.

In an interview with Nigerian Newsday the coordinator/team leader of the workshop, Dr Moses Olaleju Ojo said about 140 million school age children in the countray were yet to receive basic education.

Dr Ojo who is also the Director, Planning, Research and Statistics Department, NCCE stressed: “Until we change our attitude towards teachers education, the problem of poor teaching and lack of teachers in schools would remain unsolved”.

He said the situation whereby Nigerians shun away from being trained as teachers was unfortunate, pointing out that this could lead to collapse of the education sector, because there could be no learning without qualified teachers.

Dr Ojo also noted that, one of the problems hindering the progress of education in Nigeria was that, emphasis was not given to teaching at the basic level and called on governments to refocus its attention on the production of quality teachers to man basic educational institutions in the country. He said that teachers education was an agent of development in any country.

Said he: “If you want any improvement in any nation, improve teachers education because it is the teachers that teach the students who in turn become the agents of change and development”.

He pointed out that, age 0-15 is the most crucial stage during which a child needed to be cared for adding that, “the moment we don’t get it right at this level, we would never get it right again”.