How to make teaching profession attractive, by Tella

In a bid to encourage youths to make foray into the teaching profession, federal and state governments have been urged to make it attractive by introducing a better welfare package for teachers in the country. The Chairman of Council of the newly established Federal College of Education, Iwo, Alhaji Laid Tella, disclosed this in an interview with The Guardian, at the inauguration of  the Governing Councils of new eight Federal Polytechnics and six Federal Colleges of Education, by the Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu.

He added that the teaching profession had over time been less priced, less attractive and not valued by many, owing to poor remuneration for teachers in the country. Tella, a Former Managing Director of Monitor Newspapers and Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Mass Communication, University of Ilorin, explained that the move would also enhance the quality of teaching and learning, as teachers would put in their best in carrying out their duties.

He explained, “Teachers are sinequanon to educational growth and development and in any field, even in vocational studies, you need teachers. Teachers these days are technically disoriented, poorly motivated and the challenging environment makes people to want to drop teaching as a profession.

“In those days, teachers were the kings of the village, but today teachers are seen as the hoi polloi. Teachers can no longer balance their daily budgets not to talk of yearly budgets.”

He said further, “Everybody wants education, but without a proper teaching capacity development, the growth of education will be in danger and it has been in danger anyway. Go to the universities, 90 percent of teachers at the university level did not undergo specialist course in education, they are professors in the narrow field. Delivery and technique of delivery are absent in many. If people are aware of these, they will opt for collages of education before going even into other fields.

“If you have 35 or 50 students in a class and you ask them who amongst you want to be a teacher? It is certain that 99 percent of them will refuse to signify in affirmative, but yet, it is a teacher that teaches them in the class.”

Tella urged the Federal Government to accord the same recognition given to other professional fields to teaching. “Government has to look at the professionalisation of teacher service the way it is done for doctors, nurses, engineers and all the other professions. Although government is trying to do that now, I think there is inadequate mobilisation of the mind of the public to buy into this. If there is a good collaboration between government at all levels, and the media, it will help to address this. In America and Europe, teachers are well paid because the prize of negligence which we are running into now had affected them in the past and they now give honour back to the teachers.

“We need to learn from the experience in Europe and America where teachers are being glorified now and quickly reverse the trend where most pupils and students do not want anything to do with teachers education. We must get them interested and the way to get them interested is what NCE would do.”

He emphasised the need “to revise the curriculum of schools and curriculum of various departments to reflect the town and gown. Downloading subjects from Google does not provide the answer, it provides only support, so teachers must be ready to reenact teaching. Many teachers are pretty traders because of the inadequacy of the salaries to cater for their personal needs.

“The first thing is to give teachers a special salary scale that will discourage the flight of people from teaching. Teaching environment also needs to be developed, we are in digital age, most of the primary schools here don’t know about digitisation except some private schools they are in good standing. Many of these teachers that are supposed to pioneer a system for a new education that is the world now don’t have the capacity.

“Teachers have been neglected for too long, most secondary schools don’t have teachers quarters and where there is, it is grossly inadequate and poorly maintained. These are things that motivated teachers in those days to remain focused on their goals of bringing up good students.”

Speaking on what Nigerians should expect from the institution, he said, “The temporary site is a new site that has not been finished and fit for educational purposes. The permanent site is not too far apart from the temporary site, so academic and strong infrastructural pioneering and laying the foundation for a world class college of education is a huge challenge.

“Though it is a federal institution, the state will have to play a good role in assisting the college to settle down. As it is now, there is pausity of funds even at the federal level, the takeoff grant is not huge, we expect support from TETFund, we also expect support from public minded individuals, both locally and internationally to establish the various schools. There are seven schools and each school has its own perculiarity.

“It’s a general education institute and not NCE technical, that presupposes that we are concerned with the production of teachers to teach both the sciences, art and social sciences in secondary and primary schools throughout Nigeria, we are also expected to lead in educational delivery in computer age.

“Without a solid foundation at the secondary and primary school levels, tertiary education is in peril. For us, I will join hands with my colleagues on the board and management to be responsible and responsive to the guidance of the federal ministry of education, the National Commission for Colleges of Education that is in charge of accreditation of courses.

“We are really ready to hit the ground running to make sure that we bring modernity into the teaching system in Nigeria. We want to lead others in this age of digitisation, the age of high powered telecommunication. Nigerians should expect that we are going to have a college of education that is compliant with digital age and also be at par with the advanced world. If you fail to move along with changing times, changing times will force you to change. It is better to change along with changing time voluntarily than to be dragged along.

“We will struggle to establish a computer based educational institution and provide the best teachers education in all fields. In all parts of the advanced world now, learning is from cradle to grave, we are going to provide a training ground that will be bipolar, a training ground that will provide teachers of primary and secondary schools with adequate knowledge to mentor the junior ones. We are going to provide them with the opportunity of learning at least one trade before they leave the college…”

“Our intention is to get the management and council together to lead others, a collaboration between the council and the management will bring a positive movement for development of education. My goal is to have a perfect synergy between the council and management of the school, so that together we can lead the rest.”