NAN-H-14
Colleges
By Victor Adeoti
Osogbo, April 4, 2017 (NAN)Alhaji Fatai Kolawole, Permanent Secretary, State Universal Basic Education (SUBEB), in Osun, has called for adequate funding of colleges of education in the country to guarantee production of competent teachers nationwide.
Kolawole made the call in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Osogbo on Tuesday.
According to him, when colleges of education in the country are well funded, qualified and competent National Certificate in Education (NCE) graduates will be produced.
Kolawole, who noted that colleges of education in the country were not well funded to guarantee adequate training and retraining of teachers, said government at all levels must be ready to invest in education for quality service delivery in the sector.
He also decried the call in some quarters that policy makers should replace Grade ll teacher’s certificate with the National Certificate of Education as the basic minimum requirement in the teaching profession.
” I will not subscribe to that idea that Grade II certificate should replace NCE in teaching of basic education, as we can only move forward and not backward.
“Moreso, it is not the NCE or Grade ll certificates that are the issue rather, the kind of training teachers are exposed to.
“Government should invest in colleges of education as well as teachers’ education so that our NCE can be made better”.
Besides, Kolawole also advised government to always carry out recruitment of teachers on merit rather than on nepotism and favouritism.
He said when competent teachers were recruited based on merit, the falling standard of education in the country would quickly be remedied.
Kolawole also called on for the inclusion of vocational and entrepreneurship skills in primary and secondary curriculum.
He said such training at basic education, would help pupils and students alike to have the consciousness of being self-employed rather than seeking for white collar jobs in the future.(NAN)
VE/KOO/EAL
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Edited by Kevin Okunzuwa/Ekemini Ladejobi