Thread by @obyezeks

Students’ skills, expectations, motivation & behavior.
Family resources, attitudes &support.
Peer group skills, attitudes &behavior
School organization, resources & climate.
Curriculum structure &content.
Teacher skills, knowledge, attitudes & practices.
What about all these?

Those are the multiple factors that work together to determine the levels and differences in Students’ academic achievements or Learning Outcomes in all School Systems. They ALL MATTER.
I will do a Thread on #TeacherQuality.

As anyone can clearly see from the listed factors that “what students bring to school; ie their abilities and attitudes and those of their families, communities and peers all matter. What plenty research has found is that these matter BIG TIME.

Factors that are within & unique to each of the Students, their families, peers and communities will inherently vary. Research picks up those variations as the single largest reason for differences in Learning Outcomes. NOTE: They are outside the Education Policymaker’s control.

For those factors that are within the control of the Policy Makers and therefore amenable to their influence, research across countries have proven that #TeacherQuality is the single most important variable that can determine student achievement.

So even if we built up all the classrooms in our school system into magnificent edifices, restructured our curricula, introduced cutting edge instructional materials, etc but DID NOT concurrently RAISE #TeacherQuality, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY for us to IMPROVE Learning Outcomes.

It is reason Teacher Policy issues shot up HIGH on the Agenda of serious countries. Armed with this knowledge during our Education Reforms era, we did a Diagnosis of our “Quantity” & “Quality” of Teachers in our classrooms nationwide. IT WAS SOBERING.

Well, I shall continue this Thread tomorrow. ✌🏾

Both in terms of Number of Teachers and the Quality of Teachers in the classrooms nationwide we were struggling seriously. We needed to grow the pipeline of Supply by more than 60% & Teacher Certificate TC2 holders (>50%) filled our classrooms -below minimum requirements of NCE.

Faced with the reality that Teachers- the most significant & costly resources in any school system -were in VERY BAD shape nationwide we (FG) had to LEAD toward identifying options of SOLUTIONS through the federation coordinating body for Education: National Council on Education.

The collective problem we needed to solve as a Federated unit was : “Identify Strategies that would help us have competent teachers who deliver high Teaching Quality in order to raise Student Achievement also known as (aka) Learning Outcomes NATIONWIDE.

Strategies were identified, discussed and agreed at National Council on Education meetings which Minister of Education chairs with Commissioners of Education of states +secretary of Ed for FCT as members + several other stakeholders. A NATIONAL PROBLEM needed a NATIONAL SOLUTION.

To solve the contravention of minimum requirement of NCE degree for Basic Education level, we set a target by which ALL remaining >50% TC2 Teachers would upgrade their academic qualification through our special intervention program designed for National Teachers Institute- NTI.

All remaining >50% TC2 holders who were in our classrooms at that time were already in violation of Policy that was set but NEVER IMPLEMENTED. A Policy is NOT A SOLUTION until it is translated into ACTIONABLE bytes & executed. The NTI Teachers Upgrade was designed to be that.

All Colleges of Education and Departments of Education of all Universities were partners in the execution of the TC-2 to NCE Teachers Upgrade intervention which was designed as 2-year accelerated program. Each TC2 Teacher had to pass an Entry exam to be admitted into it.

At the time I was heading out of Government, the 1st batch of TC2 Teachers that met entry requirement had commenced their Upgrade program to NCE both at National Teachers Institute & partner institutions. The scale of the 4-yr long intervention program was massive but was DOABLE.

The design of the TC-2 Upgrade Program anticipated the discovery of “Teachers” of the “quality” that competency tests in Ekiti, Edo and Kaduna have thrown up. Unqualified Teachers were hired for decades by States as Access to Education expanded without growing # of TRAINED ones.

One of the scandalous things that triggered me then was the result of our Review of States’ spending of our Federal intervention Fund- UBEC Grants. Some of the Governors used the Grant to hire party thugs as “Teachers” for their schools. We pulled our Funds in such cases.

To deliberately employ Unqualified Teacher into the classroom is to willfully damn the Learning Prospects of the children they teach. Research shows that the effect of such FAULTY FOUNDATION at Primary/Basic School level will follow those children as a Lifelong DISADVANTAGE.

Painfully, most of the States that had HIGH number of such “Unqualified Teachers” were also the Educationally Disadvantaged ones! In effect, what you had was an Entrapment of both the children, Education & their communities as low Learning Outcomes entrenched in their classrooms.

Getting Governors to personally CARE about such ENTRAPMENT was a Herculean Task in the AFFECTED States as they often did not see Human Capital as the KEY to a Great Future for people, states and country. NO. So, their MINDSET neither PRIORITIZED Education and Quality Teachers.

In a Federal Structure, a country is as Great as its weakest links. Therefore no way can a FG stand aloof when such mismanagement of Foundational Levels of Education is going on in States. That was why we had to literally “herd” EVERYONE through NCE to find Solutions.

So back to the Teachers Upgrade Program. Once we agreed it at the National Council on Education (NCE) &started implementing through the National Teachers Institute, all Colleges of Education & Depts of Education of all Universities, we believed the States will KEEP FAITH WITH IT.

But, we did not stop at “hoping” for “Good Faith” of the States to make it work. We complimentarily OVERHAULED the Directorate of Inspection of the Federal Ministry of Education & strengthened UBEC monitoring capacity. We planned for constant INSPECTION & MONITORING nationwide.

*We believed the States WOULD keep faith with it*.

The FME Directorate of Inspection Reform was an ANCHOR agenda for us. It was the most effective way to keep the Education System— the States, schools, teachers and other stakeholders - under CONSTANT SCRUTINY. That way it would be easier to DETECT & SPEEDILY FIX anomalies.

Some of you were old enough to follow our Reforms, right? Does any of you remember our wholesale NATIONWIDE school inspection program called ORASS (Operation Reach All Secondary Schools)? It was an innovative solution to reestablish a BASELINE in Inspection of our Schools.

ORASS— Operation Reach All Secondary Schools - was executed with the theme “A School Inspector Is Coming Your Way Today”. We pulled out our retired Head Teachers/Principals/Inspectors/Administrators and TRAINED them in the ORASS wholesale school Inspection methods. It was DEEP.

For a period of One Week, schools nationwide hosted our ORASS Inspectors who had undergone “immersion” in the innovative inspection method. The result of their Inspection was what provided us incredible DATA on number & state of secondary schools in Nigeria at that time.

ORASS was definitely one of the Reforms I was most proud of because of my passion for Evidence-Based policymaking. It was swift to design and fully execute. ORASS helped us generate DATA to begin building our Nigeria Education Management Information System (NEMIS).

Our execution of the ORASS Inspection program at that time in 2006 was designed to be the LAUNCHING PAD of a new annual nationwide collaboration in School Inspection between FME and the State ministries. Annual ORASS was to become the norm so we could have States Schools Ranking.

Whereas ORASS was our Secondary Schools Inspection initiative, we also designed ORAPS - Operation Reach All Primary Schools. We scheduled ORAPS’ execution to start 4 months after ORASS in order to LEARN from the latter. Sadly, ORAPS never happened. ORASS was never continued.

Ponder this. Just because a New Administration came on board, Reform initiatives like ORASS and ORAPS were “rested”. Worse, no alternative ideas were offered to replace them & so THE PROBLEMS only worsened with the passage of time.

Think of the preceding tweet with the added knowledge that the LAST nationwide Inspection of our Schools at Primary & Secondary levels happened at least 2 decades before our ORASS & ORAPS initiatives. It was reason the FME had no idea of HOW BROKEN our school system had become!

Here we are, 11/10yrs after Inspection programs of ORASS &ORAPS were abandoned acting “SHOOK” @Kaduna. Programs designed to MONITOR our school systems to ensure States compliance with the Teachers’ Upgrade program & related STANDARDS issues were WILLFULLY abandoned. HERE WE ARE.

Now that Kaduna has RIGHTLY decided to resolutely tackle the several DECADES old Unqualified Teachers problem, perhaps the FME can awaken to the issue as a Nationwide one. No Unqualified Teacher should be left in our Classrooms. None, if we are a serious country. None at all.

Compromising the Education of our children by retaining Unqualified Teacher because of unarguably salient concerns of job loss for those affected is a NO NO. It is WRONG policy approach to AVOID taking a RIGHT SOLUTION to a MAJOR Problem simply cos of collateral problems.

To address the collateral problem of Job Losses and associated adverse social effect, that will follow from disengagement of Unqualified Teachers, a Govt can go on and quickly DESIGN & IMPLEMENT a “New Opportunities Jobs/Entrepreneurship Program” for the affected Ex-“Teachers”.

Next I will focus on the other Teachers Initiatives that included:
Special Recruitment Initiative to Improve Number of Teachers in Classrooms- especially rural areas.
Top Talents: Comprehensive Review of Teachers Remuneration Package by Salaries & Wages Comm/FME/NCE/NUT collab.

I’ll also touch on:
The Special In-Service Training for ALL Teachers.
The Professionalization of Teaching initiative through empowering of the Teachers Registration Council.
The Restoring Prestige of Teachers initiative:Annual Presidential Teachers Award.
The Housing All Teachers

Hopefully, I’ll be able to focus on all those other programs that focused on improving Teacher Quality and Quality of Teaching nationwide when I next tweet on this subject. Thanks for reading the Thread. Blessings! 🌹