Department for International Development, an agency of the United Kingdom, has inaugurated the Teacher Development Programme to boost learning in six northern states.
The programme will train 62,000 school teachers, 4,000 student teachers and 816 teacher educators in the six states.
The beneficiaries of the TDP arrangement, which is aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning at the basic education level, are Jigawa, Katsina, Zamfara, Niger, Kaduna and Kano states.
The programme, funded by DFID, is intended to improve the skills of teachers in the three core curriculum subjects of English, Mathematics and Science and Technology, is to produce better teachers through a combination of pre-service and in-service training.
The Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education, Dr. MacJohn Nwaobiala, represented by the National Programme Manager, TDP, Dr. Nguyan Shaku Feese, said this at the meeting of the National Joint Committee for the TDP in Abuja.
He expressed optimism that the findings and recommendations of the working groups would be used to refine and improve the process of implementing the set of reforms articulated by the National Commission for Colleges of Education.
Nwaobiala lamented that the provision of regular sustainable Continuing Professional Development opportunities for teacher educators started to receive adequate attention recently.
“A key element of the reform of pre-service training is how to ensure that the teacher educators in our training institutions do have the regular opportunities for updating their subject content knowledge and pedagogical skills,” he stated.
Executive Secretary of NCCE, Prof. Muhammed Junaid, said the commission was committed to ensuring the production of quality teachers for the nation’s basic education sector.
According to him, the NCCE would continue to work with the colleges and TDP to accomplish the necessary reforms in the sector.
Junaid said, “Our ultimate aim in implementing the CPD programme is to engender a paradigm shift in the way lecturers teach, from traditional transmission model of teaching to constructivist gender sensitive pedagogy.”
