The Federal government has announced digital literacy training for 45,000 teachers across 24 States in Nigeria.
The Registrar, Teachers Registration Council Of Nigeria TRCN , Prof. Josiah Ajiboye made the announcement in Abuja while briefing Journalists on the 3rd phase of the Global Partnership Education GPE, Digital Literacy Training and Remote Learning Strategies For Teachers .
The lead role of the Teacher Training sub- committee of the GPE programme was ceded to the Council by the Federal Ministry of Education.
According to Prof. Ajiboye, the training which was designed to bridge the gap created by the outbreak of the pandemic that affected the Nigerian education system is to build resilience in learners against future shock.
He disclosed that Benue, Bauchi, Ebonyi, Enugu, Gombe, Jigawa and 10 other focal states were initially selected for the take-off of the training which is to hold in four tranches.
He also said that the digital literacy programme is to train teachers and school leaders in emergency preparedness and response to provide safe school practice including Covid-19.
“The TRCN as a lead agency in the teacher training sub-committee of the Global Partnership for Education Covid-19 response programme through the support of UNICEF, embarking on digital literacy training and remote learning for 30,000 teachers across 16 focal states”.
The TRCN Registrar further disclosed that each tranche of the training involves 7,500 teachers.
“The first stage of this project was the training of 480 Master trainers who would serve as facilitators in the upcoming training across Benue, Enugu, Kaduna and Sokoto States.
“The minister of Education added 8more states to the already selected 16states making it 24, that means 45000 teachers will now be trained over all, this will be the first phase of the GPE teachers training programme”.
At the completion of the circle of 16 focal states, 15,000 more teachers will be trained in eight focal states of Bayelsa, Delta, Edo, Ekiti, Lagos, Osun, Oyo and Rivers States.
“These additional states will be the 4th phase of the GPE teacher training programme.
“The major objective of the training is to provide capacity development opportunities to teachers and school leaders in the deployment of technology in classrooms, distance learning methods using both online and offline to continue learning”.
One-Teacher-One-Laptop project
Prof Josiah said that the one-teacher-one-laptop initiative of the federal government is at the conclusive stage with the appraisal of the Nigerian Union of Teachers and a submitted document to the full adoption of the project.
According to him, “the one teacher one laptop initiative of 2021 is a living project. Two laptop vendors already made proposals on this and a document has been presented to the minister of state for education on this. An appraisal of the programme has also been done by the NUT; we are waiting for further directives on the programme.
“The idea is that you cannot train people with digital literacy and not empower them.
This is to enable teachers pay for the laptop at a subsidized rate,” he concluded.
Nneka Ukachukwu
