In a statement made available to us, The Human Development
Initiatives Boss has urged the Lagos State Government to continue to improve the
quality of the teaching profession to attract young and best brains into the service for a robust
future of our educational system.
To buttress her point, she has recommended among other things that; “The Lagos State Government provide
basic social welfare packages for teachers and education officers to attract
young professional teachers into the public education sector.
“The Lagos
State Government through her Ministry of Education should institutionalize the
blueprints of successful past interventions such as Lagos Eko Projects, ESSPIN,
COMPASS, etc to strengthen education governance.
“The Lagos
State Government should widen sources of funding for education and encourage
Corporate Sector investment as well as voluntary support. National
examination bodies and relevant institutions should review upward the criteria
for admission into education institutions (Universities and Colleges of
Education) to attract the best brains into the teaching profession.
“The Lagos
State Government should eliminate political interference in teachers’
recruitment processes and make it more transparent and
inclusive. The Ministry of Education working with other relevant
institutions should improve the training and retraining of teachers and develop
efficient KPIs to monitor teachers’ training performance.
“The Ministry
of Education in collaboration with the other agencies of government should strengthen
recruitment plan/strategy to sustain sufficient supply of professional teachers
into the public school system.
“The Lagos
State Government should strengthen the Quality Assurance Department of the
Ministry of Education to regularly and effectively supervise, monitor education
service delivery and school interventions.”
Also, in the statement, she said, “In addition to the foregoing, the
Lagos State must deal with some key challenges of the teaching profession which
include, but not limited to poor funding of the public education system,
inadequate remuneration of public school teachers especially basic education,
lack of social security/poor service condition, poor teaching, and learning
environment, grossly inadequate instructional materials and infrastructure,
inadequate training and training opportunities.
“Furthermore,
political interference in teachers’ recruitment, obsolete curriculum, inferior
entry criteria for acquiring teaching qualification, ineffective implementation
of existing education policies, stagnation in the recruitment of professional
teachers, inability to sustain effective systems/best practices introduced by
past donors’ interventions such as ESPIN, Eko Project, and COMPASS.
“Others
include inefficient Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for training conducted
for teachers in Lagos State in the past and system that ensure value for the
money spent, inadequate supervision and mentoring of teachers especially in
hard-to-reach areas, among others. All these further reduce the efficiency of
teachers and lower the standards of teachers and education in the State and
country at large, which must be addressed urgently. It is difficult to attract
young and vibrant minds into the teaching profession in the face of these
challenges. Without a new generation of motivated, up-to-date and tech-savvy
teachers, millions of children will continue to miss out on quality, equitable
and inclusive education and Nigeria’s future will certainly suffer the
consequences.”
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