Nigerian Newsday

By Usman Shuaibu

The First National Conference of the Faculty of Education, University of Abuja, has urged the Federal Government to review teachers’ salary and remuneration as it was obtainable in other sectors of the economy.

This was stated in a communique made available to Kapital News recently. It also called on the federal government to put in place, a housing scheme for teachers at the pre-primary, primary as well as secondary levels.

According to the communique, "government should take the necessary step to ensure that adequate number of quality teachers are produced for the pre-primary, primary and secondary schools to enhance productivity".

It further called on government to provide enough capital for proper supervision of schools at all levels of education, adding that research grants should be made available to faculties and institutes of education to ginger them to carry out research towards the upliftment of the entire education system in the country.

On the UBE programme, the communique said that all consultancy matters regarding to Universal Basic Education (UBE) should be handled by faculties and institutes of education and asked the federal, state and local governments to employ the services of unemployed teachers who were already trained but still roaming the streets without jobs.

The communique expressed dismay that the early childhood education was left in the hands of the private operators and urged the government to carry its reform programme to revisit the childhood education which was neglected long ago.

According to the communique, "the government should focus attention on teacher education for the training of primary school teachers as a primary basis of the reforms," adding that government should provide enough money for the training of the physically challenged.

"Credit facilities should be made available for teachers research, training and retraining in the fields of science and technology and the teaching of Nigerian Languages. Special allowances for science teachers should be restored and teaching allowances for language teacher should be instituted," the communique explained.

The communique therefore called on the Nigerian Academy of Education (NAE) to intervene in the curriculum for teachers education in the country, adding that the Nigerian Academy of education should also oversee the accreditation of all teacher education programmes.

The conference explained that the entry qualification into Teacher Education Programmes should be the Nigerian Certificate of Education (NCE) with five credits at one sitting, saying that this is the only way the image of the teaching profession would be improved.

The occasion was attended by the representative of the minister for education who was also the minister of state for education, Dr. Sayyadi Abba Ruma, the executive secretary NTI who was represented by Mr. Dele Yahaya, the vice chancellor of the National Open University who was representated by professor O.E.M fagbamiye and among others.