The Federal Government will declare a state of emergency in the education sector in April, Minister of Education Adamu Adamu said yesterday.
“By the end of April, we are proposing there will be a declaration of state of emergency in the education sector all over the country.
“We request all the state governors to do same in their states and we hope that once this is done our educational sector will improve.
“I will also meet with the governors to appeal to them to give special emphasis to address the problem of low standard of education especially at primary level,” he said.
Adamu spoke when he received Niger State Governor Abubakar Sani-Bello and some members of his executive at the Federal Ministry of Education Headquarters in Abuja.
Adamu requested the support of governors to also declare education emergency in their respective states.
The minister said the ministry was planning to present a proposal to the National Council on Education for graduates of education to henceforth be employed on Grade Level 10 of eight.
He said the proposal would also include offering employment to students studying education in tertiary institutions.
Bello, said that the state government was revamping the educational sector through provision of good infrastructure in schools and training of teachers.
He said that the state government planned to establish three teachers professional institute in the three zones, adding that one was already being established in Munya Local Government Area.
The governor solicited the support of the minister on the development of the institutions.
Confirming the poor state of education, Nasarawa State Governor Tanko Al Makura said 80 per cent of teachers in his state are not qualified and would fail an aptitude test if it was administered on them.
Al Makura speaking at the opening ceremony of a conference to review the minimum standards of the National Certificate of Education (NCE), said the government had carried out some research and found that most primary and secondary school teachers should not be in the classes.
Al-Makura, who was represented by Commissioner for Education Aliyu Tijjani Ahmed however said that government would not conduct a test on the teachers.
“We are not planning a test for the teachers; we only intend to train and retrain them so as to build their capacities for better service delivery,” he said.
He appealed to the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), and other stakeholders to step-up supervision in order to save the sector from total collapse.
The governor advised the reviewers to pay special attention to technical education and entrepreneurship to make NCE graduates more attractive to employers of labour.
Prof. Bappah Aliyu, Executive Secretary of NCCE said the conference would review the current curriculum and inject new ideas so as to boost the quality of the graduates.
He said such review was last carried out in 2012, and urged stakeholders to offer suggestions that would shore up the quality of Colleges of Education to enable them produce qualified teachers.
Provost, College of Education Akwanga Mrs. Rebecca Umaru, expressed optimism that the outcome of the conference would keep lecturers and the management of the respective colleges on their toes in the efforts to produce teachers that would be assets to the society.