The Kaduna State Government says it will conduct another competency test for primary school teachers as part of efforts to ensure quality teaching in basic schools.
Mr Mohammed Mubarak, Permanent Member, Physical and Project Monitoring, Kaduna State Universal Basic Education Board, said this during an interactive session with APC News Media team in Kaduna on Wednesday.
Mubarak recalled that the state government had in 2017 sacked about 22,000 unqualified teachers who failed a competency test conducted to determine their teaching competency.
He said that it was a costly decision that had to be done, saying that the government replaced the sacked teachers with 25,000 qualified ones, including PhD and M.Sc. holders, recruited through vigorous screening processes.
He explained that the board was currently in the process of conducting another competency test for primary school teachers with a view to maintaining the required teaching standard in primary schools.
Mubarak said that the test, which would be conducted hopefully before the end of 2021, was to further ascertain the competency of the teachers.
“We are equally expending N341 million on teachers’ professional development with support from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), through training and retraining.
“This is in line with the government’s commitment to ensure quality teaching and learning in basic schools across the state,” he said.
The board’s Permanent Member, Human Resource Management, Dr Christy Alademerin, said that the planning for the competency test was ongoing.
“We are planning and setting the questions because this administration insists on the best of the best.
“We are going to conduct the competency test to either weed out incompetent ones or whatever the outcome will look like, just to maintain the standard.
“Gov. Nasir El-Rufai is doing his best, insisting on the best and we are on our toes to make sure that we do the best,” she said.
Earlier, Dr Tom Ohikere, Chief Publisher of APC News Media, explained that he was on an inspection tour to take stock of the achievements of the APC-led government across APC-led states.
Ohikere said that inspection tour with support from the UBEC was with emphasis on the commission’s supported Universal Basic Education projects.
He said that the goal of the exercise was to create visibility in the relentless effort of the APC-led administration toward improving access to quality basic education through the UBE programme.
