31% of teachers in Sokoto ‘not qualified but can be trained’

A committee set up by the Sokoto state government says thirty-one per cent of public school teachers in the state are not qualified to be teachers.

The committee, set up to proffer solutions to challenges confronting the education sector in the state, also said 73 per cent of the teachers lacked computer skills.

Shadi Sabeh, chairman of the committee’s needs assessment sub-committee, said 360 schools were assessed during the survey.

A statement by Imam Imam, the governor’s spokesperson, quoted him as saying the “unqualified” teachers are, however, “educated enough to be trained to enhance their qualifications”.

While noting the imbalance in teachers’ distribution between rural and urban areas, Sabeh urged the state government to “urgently” bring up measures to address the problem.

He said part of the committee’s recommendations is the employment of 548 more teachers “to achieve a teacher/student ratio of 1:40, the standard set for public schools in the state.

“There’s need to repost 537 teachers from some schools that are over-staffed within the Sokoto metropolis to the many that are lacking teachers in rural areas.

“Government must enforce compliance with federal government’s directives that all teachers must be registered with the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN). At the moment, only 14 percent of the teachers have the necessary registration.

“In general, there is an ardent and urgent need for a robust capacity building program that will close the training gap among teachers in the state. This is against the backdrop that 90% of teachers surveyed have not attended any form of training, workshop and seminar in the last three years.”

The statement further quoted Tambuwal as promising to implement the committee’s report, adding: “Let me repeat it here that no teacher will be sacked from government employ. We will retrain them to update their knowledge. Those who at the end prove untrainable will be moved to other parts of the civil service where their expertise will be required.”

The committee’s revelation is coming at a time when a total of 21,780 teachers in Kaduna state reportedly failed the primary four examination administered to test their competence.