Ayade: West African countries will benefit from Cross River’s teachers institute

Ben Ayade, Cross River governor, says the newly constructed Teachers Continuous Training Institute (TCTI) in Biase LGA is set up to attend to the teaching needs of countries in West Africa.

Ayade spoke while inspecting the ongoing project at the institute on Sunday.

The governor, who described the institute as “world-class”, explained that the TCTI will create an “inspiring and welcoming” academic atmosphere with the intention to train and retrain teachers.

“I am really excited about the possibility of having a world-class teaching environment in Cross River State because we understand the influence of environment on quality of teaching and quality of learning,” he said.

“I am very very impressed with the quality and the speed of furnishing. My hope is that will have the urgency and need to enroll enmasse. We can beam with satisfaction that the Nigerian Teachers Training Institute will now take place here and I am sure that at the fullness of time, Nigerians will recognize the value of quality education.

“The Teachers Continuous Training Institute, the first of its kind, is intended to train teachers and continuously retrain teachers because the quality of students is determined by the quality of teaching and the quality of teaching is a reflection of the quality of the training.

“Traditionally, when teachers are out of the university and get employed as teachers, they have no opportunity for further training and no continuous training. So the teachers themselves are sometimes not up to date,  even with the subjects they teach.

“This is because trends and research keep throwing up new findings, but unfortunately a teacher has no opportunity to update his knowledge on the subject matter, particularly when you are teaching in a village setting and away from the city centre like the capital of the state.

“The institute is, therefore, set up specifically to attend to the teaching needs of West Africa, to drive home the message of quality teaching because only through quality teaching that you can have quality learning which also translates to a quality outcome.”

Ayade, who had worked as a lecturer at Delta State University, Abraka, where he was subsequently appointed professor, explained that his time as an academic helped him to understand the “pitfalls” in the country’s university environment.

“I studied the limitations of our teaching and I come from a university setting therefore, my inspiration came from my own life,” he added.

“I have been in and around a university environment at very young age, I know its pitfalls and so given the opportunity as a governor, I needed to correct those things that I saw that were wrong because teachers were not comfortable, the teaching environment was not comfortable, teaching was made to be seen as the last resort when every other job failed.”

The governor stressed that “education is the basis for more societal transformation and that is why Cross River State is being ruled by two professors. And as a government we place emphasis on the quality of teaching  and quality of research, hence this school.”

Speaking on the curricula that will be run by the institute, Ayade said the TCTI plans to adopt the ones used by exam bodies like the West African Examinations Council (WAEC) and the National Examination Council (NECO).

According to him, the plan is “to run a curriculum that is very akin to and related to our GCE, WAEC, and NECO exams across West Africa. If we are preparing students to write physics, we will bring in the best physics teachers across the world but instead of them coming to teach the students, they’re coming to teach the teachers so the teachers will gain this knowledge and go back and teach the students in their various schools.

“So, if am teaching you physics and I am a specialist in optics, then I will come and teach optics and I will leave after two months or three months depending on the duration of my contract,” he added.

“But the Professor who is the provost of this institute must have an affiliation across the world to know the best hands to bring in for each speciality to train the teacher who will now go and teach that subject in the secondary school. This means he is returning with advanced knowledge and the latest knowledge in his discipline.”