Thursday, November 08, 2012

Blog 11 Nigeria: Teacher Gap Must be Addressed 11/8




The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) has demanded that the federal government in Nigeria pay teachers’ salaries in order to maintain their employment in financially strapped states in Nigeria. This demand has been made towards a response to a statement made by Professor Mohammed Ibn Junaid, stating that Nigeria needs over 1.3 million teachers to meet the demands in basic education by 2015. The attempt to close this gap the “Federal Teacher Scheme” (FTS), recruited 1,000 teachers for each of the 36 states of the federation, paying them monthly allowance. These teachers only received two-year contracts, and then became unemployed, as the individual states could not afford to pay them. The Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) desires to monitor teachers’ availability in schools.  The government and relevant agencies have to guarantee that they will fill all existing teacher gaps in the educational systems to offer an effective service delivery in public schools.
This is an important issue to resolve because the children in Nigeria are suffering from the teacher gap. They are not receiving the quality education that most other countries are getting and it will push them behind academically. Most of these children and families are sending themselves to school to reach goals, such as getting a job to provide a better income and to get they to reach social stratification. Keeping these children from having an education is going to leave them where they are now and hold them back from reaching their goals.  The government inability to pay these teachers is causing these issues towards the children. 

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