Report into Borno State education sector reveals that as many as 22% of them are not even trainable

GOVERNOR Babagana Zulum of Borno State has described as very scary recent findings showing that as many as 31.6%  of the teachers employed in his state are incompetent with as many as 22.1% of them not even being trainable.

Yesterday, the governor was reacting to findings submitted to him by a committee tasked with conducting basic literacy and numeracy competency assessment of 17,229 local education authority teachers across the 27 local government areas of Borno State. This committee’s report was presented to the governor by the Borno State commissioner for education, Lawan Abba Wakilbe, at Government House in Maiduguri.

Present during the presentation were members of the committee including the chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board, Bulama Kagu. Their report revealed shocking statistics showing that out of 17,229 teachers across the 27 local government areas, only 5,439 representing 31.6% proved competent to teach, while 3, 815 teachers representing 22.1% are not competent to teach and are not trainable.

In addition, the report revealed that 7,975 teachers representing 46.3% of staff were found not fully competent but trainable. Also, the report revealed that 2, 389 teachers representing 13.9% of the staff employed across the state, have been teaching without any formal qualification from any institution.

Mr Kagu said: “A breakdown of the report’s findings across the 27 local government areas showed, from the worst indices, that out of 224 teachers in Abadam Local Government Area in northern Borno, only 14 are competent to teach, as 74 are untrainable while 136 can be trained. The report further said out of Kala-Balge’s 272 teachers, only 21 are competent to teach with 118 untrainable and 133 trainable.

“The report also showed indices for other local government areas from which Maiduguri Metropolitan Council had the highest number of 396 untrainable teachers, followed by Askira-Uba with 281 untrainable teachers, Chibok-268 untrainable teachers, Bama with 246 untrainable teachers and Biu with 219 teachers who cannot teach.

“The report also said that of all the 17,229 teachers, 1,627 representing 9.4% are degree holders, 8,153 representing 47.3% are National Certificate of Education (NCE) holders, 713 representing 4.1% are teachers Grade Two certificates’ holders while 2,281 representing 13.2% are Senior Secondary School/GCE holders, with the remaining 2,389 representing 13.9% not having any formal certificate.”

Governor Zulum said the committee members had informed him that they came across an NCE holder who could not write NCE during the test but was teaching students. He noted that he decided to set up the assessment committee after a series of spontaneous assessments of teachers during his regular unscheduled trips to local government areas.

“We cannot move Borno forward unless we are able to sanitise our public schools system. If I am able to sanitise education, I would have achieved 50% of what I set out to achieve as governor,” he added.

Despite the report, Governor Zulum assured the committee that he will not sack the 3,815 untrainable teachers but he will, depending on the recommendations, consider approving their transfer to other areas.  He added that this would involve moving then to areas where they can perform other tasks such as tree planting at the ministry of environment.