Kano State: UNICEF advocates change in approach to Teachers’ training

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Education Specialist, Manar Ahmed has advocated for a change in the approach to training and retraining of Nigerian teachers at the basic level.

Ahmed stated during a presentation on; “Foundational Literacy and Numeracy in Nigeria,” at a Media Dialogue in Kano State, that a new dimension of crisis in the basic education sector, in which children below 10 years in school are not adequately learning, requires investments in continuous professional development programmes to enhance learning outcomes in Nigerian primary schools.

She also said training of teachers must go beyond theories to on the job training which creates opportunities for the teachers to get feedback and action plan on how to improve their teaching skills.

According to her, different teaching development professional modalities would always result in better learning outcomes.

“This idea on teacher professional development is more crucial than teacher training, it involves creating enabling environment, supportive tools, community of practice that will support the teachers, peer support and supervising assessment of teachers performance”.

The Education Expert emphasised that reaching at the basic education level must be tailored in a way that would involve teaching and learning practices.

“You do not only just train the teachers but ensuring that the teachers on return to their schools after theoretical trainings have enabling environment beginning with Head teachers, school support services to provide quality coaching and mentoring as well as supportive supervision

“Circle support is most important whereby the teachers feel they are supported by the Head teacher who should provide supervisory feedback as well as school support services, as the teachers help the children to learn this will have a positive impact on learning outcomes at the basic level.”

Sharing the UNICEF experiences on Reading and Numeracy Activity RANA, Manar stated that the digital and blending approach has worked for the agency in mitigating the negative impacts of COVID 19 on the basic education sector.

Manar added that this involves the use of intranet, and internet connectivity to the classroom, “Digital does not only mean internet connection to all classrooms but also the engagement of Radio, T.V, edutainment and edu-programmings including the use of digital materials that can work online/offline.”

Meanwhile, the Nigerian government through the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria TRCN, in 2021 conducted mandatory continued development in digital and online teaching training programmes for teachers in two out of the three geopolitical zones across the country.

The Registrar of the Council, Professor Josiah Ajiboye said TRCN from January 2022 now targets the training of 45,000 teachers across 24 states under the Global Partnership Education GPE, Digital Literacy Training as well as Remote Learning Strategies For Teachers.

The Council designed the training to bridge the gap created by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic that affected the Nigerian education system . it also believes it would build resilience in learners against future shock.

The United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF, recently disclosed that Nigeria faces a staggering learning crisis with learning outcomes being one of the lowest globally.

The UN Agency further disclosed that 70 per cent of children in schools cannot read and write or perform basic numeracy tasks by age 10, as deduced from the National Learning Assessment 2017.

UNICEF attributed this to the Shortage of qualified basic teachers, which no doubt, reveals the depth of poor academic performance among pupils at the primary school level.

It emphasised that this is because most unqualified teachers lack the competence to deliver quality teaching to the pupils due to the fact that such teachers have not been trained in deploying 21st-century skills in teaching hence presenting their classes to be teacher-centred and depriving the pupils’ opportunity to be engaged in the learning process.

“These have revealed the importance of qualified teachers to achieving learning at the foundational level of education. it has also been made known that the act of transferring knowledge to pupils and the act of receiving knowledge from a teacher is critical to achieving a key element of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which specifically aims at Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Goals.“

These identify Education as a major driver for the achievement of the other 17 SDGs in Nigeria and across the globe.

PIAK