Mr Anslem Ojezua, an aspirant in the Edo 2024 governorship race, has promised to fill the vacuum in the state’s teaching system via reactivation of the defunct Teachers Training College (TTC).
Ojezua, of the Peoples Democratic Party, stated this on Sunday in Benin during an interactive sections with members of the Correspondent Chapel of the Edo Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), at the Chapel’s office.
He said that the shortage of teachers in the state needed to be addressed so that the gains of the Gov. Godwin Obaseki administration in the education sector could be sustained.
He noted that to address the problem, attention must shift to the TTC system, which he lamented was abrogated with the introduction of the National Certificate on Education (NCE) system, as the basic requirement to teach at the primary school level.
“I am very concerned about education, particularly at the fundamental level, because we have enough schools, but not enough teachers.
“How do we get more teachers at a lesser cost? How do we involve our communities so that our children can have access to good education?
“Education is one area I am passionate about. One way I will look at is that the government came up with a policy that you need a minimum of an NCE to be able to teach in government schools.
“And the way they interpreted it, it looks like an NCE teacher will only teach one subject, but growing up, we were used to teachers who taught all subjects.
“What stops a teacher who has gone through NCE and was taught how to teach all subjects or who may not have gone to NCE to go and acquire an NCE and come and teach all subjects.
“That way, instead of 10 teachers, one teacher can just take all the subjects and reduce the bills.
“What makes it difficult I think is that in an attempt to implement that policy, they abrogated TTC being the primary level to feed the college of education.
“Then, they used the regular secondary school to feed the colleges of education. These things have made the teachers lose the essential part of their training; learning how to teach.
“in those days, we used to have all round classroom administrators, and teachers for special subjects like Mathematics and Physics going round, but each teacher is supposed to take care of his class, that is not the case anymore.
“I think that is an area we think we will revisit. If we do that, I think we will have enough teachers. I know there is a federal policy on that, “he said.