Group urges govt, corporates to invest in public education

Human Development Initiatives (HDI) in collaboration with Actionaid Nigeria with the support of NORAD in commemorating the 2020 World Teachers’ Day has urged government and corporate organisations to invest more in public education as a means of making the teaching profession more attractive.

HDI and partners organised a one- day education stakeholders’ meeting in Lagos State to articulate some of the issues as schools are reopening after a long lockdown period; and to come up with strategies for supporting a sustainable free, quality, equitable, inclusive and resilient publicly funded education safe for both teachers and pupils.

Every October 5 is a special day dedicated, all over the world, to celebrate teachers and advocate on issues directly affecting the teaching profession and teachers in particular.

“Realising that the education sector has been in crises long before now, and that Covid- 19 pandemic only further exposed the frailty of the public education and the vulnerability of teachers in Nigeria; the stakeholders at the event called on the Lagos State government to increase education budget to address many of the infrastructural challenges especially WASH and ICT gaps; and prioritise improving teachers’ training, increase in teachers’ salaries and their general welfare in the state,” said Olufunso Owasanoye, the executive director of HDI.

According to her, without a new generation of motivated teachers, millions of children in Lagos State will miss out of quality education and will continue to miss out unless adequate measures are taken urgently to restore dignity and professionalism into teaching service.

Owasanoye opined that teachers play pivotal roles in ensuring the delivery of the global Sustainable Development Goal of ensuring quality education for all by 2030. “This goal cannot be achieved in the face of rising attrition rate of professional teachers, domination of the profession by non-professionals.

“Weak institutional system to promote cooperative teaching and quality learning output as a critical barrier to achieving inclusive education which is a global trend in education and a key component of the future of education for developing countries,” stated Owasanoye.

She stated further that the teaching profession remains in crisis in the face of poor teachers’ remuneration and welfare making the profession unattractive; and generally poor teaching and learning environments.

In the spirit of this year’s World Teachers’ Day, “teachers: leading in crisis, reimagining the future,” the stakeholders present at the workshop renewed their demand for a total quality public education system for both teachers and all children in Lagos and therefore recommended the following, among others:

That the Lagos State government should enforce compliance to TRCN Act in recruitment of teachers in both public and private schools as part of efforts to standardise the teaching profession; and that teachers education curriculum in higher institutions be overhauled and rejigged to follow the global best practice.