As part of incentives to boost increase the quality of education, the Kaduna State Government yesterday said it would increase upward, the remuneration of teachers in its primary and secondary schools.
Commissioner for Education, Ja’afaru Sani, who disclosed this at a briefing in Kaduna noted, that teachers in rural areas in particular would be targeted for special attention. According to the commissioner, the processes of recruiting 25,000 teachers to replace those sacked for failing competency test had reached an advanced stage. He dismissed the assertion by the state council of the Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT, that the state government had agreed to lower the pass mark from 75% to 60% as one of the reasons for last Thursday suspension of its indefinite strike, insisting that no such concession was given. Sani said the state’s Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) would ensure that the first batch of new teachers to be recruited was available for deployment to schools next month. He said education in the state would no longer be a dumping ground for unqualified teachers, noting: “Currently, we have more teachers in urban areas than in rural areas because the salary package is the same and so, whenever teachers are posted to rural schools they redeploy to urban centres. Governor Nasir el-Rufa’i has directed the Education ministry and other relevant stakeholders to come up with juicy incentives that will keep quality teachers in rural areas. We will also introduce a programme of identifying. ‘supper teachers’ and motivate them to encourage the clamour for excellence in the teaching profession.”
Source: Vanguard
