Dr Hamid Bobboyi, Executive Secretary, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) says the issue of quality and welfare of teachers must be addressed to move the education sector forward.
Bobboyi said this while speaking to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday.
He said that this would encourage the teachers to put in their best in the duties.
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`In terms of ratio if you look at the percentage of unqualified teachers that are in our system it is a very huge percentage and this varies again from region to region.
“There are states were you have over 60 per cent of their teachers unqualified and there are those that you find a manageable proportion.
“As a nation, we need to respond to this particular issue; we need to ensure that we have the qualified teacher; we need to ensure that we have ways to motivate these teachers in terms of salary payment.
“It pains us when we hear a state will fail to pay salaries for months and after all, there are some states paying as low as N12,000 to a teacher and this cannot even take the teacher from his house to the school.
“There are problems but we have to begin to address them in a systematic manner and it has involve the other stakeholders.‘’
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Speaking on Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD), Bobboyi said it was an essential part of what UBEC was supporting.
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“I think It was part of the resolution of the National Council on Education were 5 per cent of any intervention from UBEC will be dedicated to ECCD.
“We feel that we need to focus on that to encourage children from an early stage to be inducted into the system to appreciate learning and love learning.
“But again, if they go into ECCD centres that cannot motivate them they begin to lose interest at an early stage in the entire process.
“That is the reason we take this seriously and encourage states.
‘’The kind of assistance that will be done is the type of intervention were you help the states to see that they can sustain a robust ECCD centre where the children will have the opportunity to begin learning at a very early.’’
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NAN reports that the commission has commenced the National Assessment of Learning Achievement in Basic Education aimed at assessing and determining the efficiency and quality of performance of basic education students in Nigeria. (NAN)