Teachers' Voice – Nigeria - VSO

• The NCCE should ensure that every licensed teacher must participate in monitoring andassessing teacher students. This would provide practical training for the student teachers andprovide the teachers with first-hand information on new ideas, methodologies etc.• SUBEBs should ensure that in-house training be provided regularly at every school to enableteachers to upgrade their qualifications on a regular basis.• School, district, state and national level education consultation forums where they exist, shouldensure that there is adequate representation of teachers’ voices and views, by inviting NUTrepresentatives or teachers themselves to attend. Where such forums do not exist efforts shouldbe made to establish them.4 HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT4.1 RECRUITMENT, POSTING AND PROMOTION4.1.1 RECRUITMENT, POSTING AND PROMOTION: POLICY FRAMEWORKThe LGEA and/or school management selects teachers through interviews, in response to jobvacancy advertisements. Successful applicants are then recruited and registered by the LGEA.4.1.2 RECRUITMENT, POSTING AND PROMOTION: TEACHERS’ VIEWS“The state does not recruit enough teachers… there are secondary schools at locallevel that have two teachers with a principal that writes the examination.”(Teacher)State and local governments recruit the number of teachers based on the funds made availablefor teachers’ salaries, as opposed to the actual number of teachers needed to deliver qualityeducation.The lack of funding leads state governments to employ large numbers of unqualified teachers,as they are less of a drain on the states’ finances than NCE-qualified teachers. These unqualifiedteachers may at best only have received a grade two teaching qualification. Others have noeducation background at all, but have entered the system by means of ‘whom they know’. Apartfrom the tremendous harm this does to education, it is the cause of a surplus of unemployedNCE-qualified teachers nationwide.Furthermore, teachers trained in special needs rarely enter special needs schools. Theseschools, both public and private, are forced to employ mainstream teachers – private specialneeds schools attempt to train these teachers in special needs teaching but public schools areleft to cope. This issue both hampers the potential of the children with special needs andincreases the stress and demands of a teacher.The state of affairs is further aggravated by the lack of commitment on the part of state and localgovernments to recruit the actual number of teachers required.In order to remedy the teacher shortages, state governments proceed to move teachers fromtheir schools of choice to other, often rural, schools (usually far away) at no more than a day’snotice and without a choice. This causes teacher shortages in urban schools and huge distressto the teachers and schools concerned.“I was usually accompanied by a representative of the LGEA in the jurisdiction. Duringa visit to one of the bigger urban schools in the area the head teacher broke into tearswhen she realised who we were and the nature of our visit. ‘Could we help?’ Shepleaded. Last month, five of her teachers were transferred with a week’s notice. Shehad been begging time and again for replacements and her letters were not answered,her phone calls not returned. The present teachers flatly refused to take on yet morethan the 100+ children they were already responsible for and she couldn’t blame them.24