By Ibrahim Hassan-Wuyo

Kaduna -The Director General of the National Teachers Institute (NTI), Professor Garba Maitafsir, has said that as a lecturer at the University, he came across a PhD Student who could not write his name properly.

He said that the falling standard of education was not as a result of systemic failure, but as a result of teaching, insisting that teachers’ quality must be properly checked if Nigeria must get its education system right.

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Also, the Chairman of Teachers Service Board (TSB), in Kaduna State, Adamu Makadi said that teachers earn about 27% higher than their peers in the other sectors of the state government civil service.

The NTI boss and Adamu Makadi spoke at a One-Day Workshop on Teachers Issues In Conflict and Protracted Crisis Settings: Documenting the Effectiveness of the Kaduna Teacher Reforms.

According to Makadi, before the education reforms in Kaduna, it was discovered that. nothing really was wrong with the education system, but with the teachers, hence the need for the reform to check the recruitment, deployment and retention of teachers in the state.

“There is nothing wrong with our system of education, the problem is the quality of teachers, so Kaduna State Government took the bull by the horns by initiating a reform in the educational sector, particularly in the areas of recruitment, deployment and retention of teachers.”

“The recruitment exercise has been digitalised and adverts are open to all able and qualified candidates to apply, which has been working for us perfectly. The reform has enabled us to recruit and deploy based on their qualifications and competencies to see where they can best fit in. We also deploy teachers based on proximity to their places of residence.”

“The State Government under Senator Uba Sani has done a lot towards ensuring that competent and qualified teachers are retained in Kaduna State through provision of incentives including special allowances over other civil servants. For instance, if you are a teacher on a particular salary grade level and step, compared to your colleague who is not a teacher but in the same grade level and step, you will discover that teachers earn about 27% higher than other civil servants,” he said.

Professor Oladele Akogun, a University Don and Regional Research Director, the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Nigeria & South Sudan, said Teachers should be treated better than Medical Doctors to get the education system right.

He said, that apart from the challenge with the educators (teachers), Nigeria also needs to check its education policies, as the country cannot achieve its desired education standards if policies and practices are at variance.

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According to him, a situation where the country has a beautiful policy of free and compulsory education for up to 18 years, but in practice, it is not being
implemented cannot yield the desired result.

On the challenges of teachers, Professor Akogun said, teachers must be handled carefully the way Medical Doctors are treated, insisting that there was danger in handling teachers with kid gloves as doing so could affect generations unborn.