Governor El-Rufai to Make Teaching Profession Attractive

The Kaduna State government has concluded plans to review the remuneration and welfare package of teachers to make the profession attractive.

The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Ja’afaru Sani, who disclosed this at a news conference in Kaduna, said the state government would introduce attractive incentives for teachers in rural areas as part of ongoing reform to ensure quality education in the state.

Giving an update on the ongoing recruitment of 25,000 teachers for public primary schools in the state, he said it had become necessary to motivate and retain qualified and professional teachers posted to rural areas.

According to him, the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) is working to ensure that the first batch of newly recruited teachers are a deployed to schools in February.

The commissioner said there would be no compromise on quality of teachers to be employed in the ongoing recruitment of the 25,000 teachers.

He said the 21,780 teachers sacked for failing competency test still have a chance to be reconsidered by reapplying, adding that about 12,000 of them have reapplied.

Sani commended parents and other relevant stakeholders in the education sector for supporting the government in its efforts to reform the sector for the benefit of over two million pupils in the state, adding that the sector will no longer be a dumping ground for unqualified teachers.

“Currently, we have more teachers in urban areas than we have in rural areas because the salary package is the same and so whenever teachers are posted to rural schools they redeploy to urban centres.

“Governor Nasir El-Rufa’i has directed the ministry of education and other relevant stakeholders to come up with juicy incentives that will keep quality teachers in rural areas.

“We will also introduce a programme for identifying ‘super teachers’ and motivate them to encourage the clamour for excellence in the teaching profession,” the commissioner said.

He added that the state government is determined to entrench quality and standard in teaching and learning in its schools.

“The El-Rufa’i led-administration strongly believes that only access to affordable and quality education would ensure social mobility for children of the poor to have improved standard of living.

“This is because only quality education will equip them with the needed skills to be creative, inventive and be part of the social movement towards development and self-fulfilment.”

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