Govts gradually killing colleges of education in Nigeria — COEASU boss

Dr Smart Olugbeko is the National President of Colleges of Education Academic Staff Union (COEASU). In this exclusive interview with TUNBOSUN OGUNDARE, he raises the alarm on how government policies at both the federal and state levels are gradually killing colleges of education in Nigeria and the implications, among other issues. Excerpts:

HOW do you react to government policies on teacher education, especially at the level of colleges of education?

We all know there are serious problems facing teacher education in the country. We have a problem of low subscription for teacher education by students at not only the National Certificate in Education (NCE) level, but also at the university level. First and foremost there is a problem of poor working environment, welfare and remunerations among others. Another issue is that we often apply wrong prescriptions, when it comes to solving challenges; that is how our government operates. The government knows quite alright that there are challenges, here and there, yet it keeps running away from addressing them. So, as far as teacher education is concerned, the government at various levels knows that something must be done to address the fundamental cause or causes of these problems.

For instance, how would you be converting colleges of education to university status when you have not changed the national policy on minimum qualification for teaching as a country? Now, the minimum qualification for teaching in Nigeria is still the NCE. The policy has clearly stated the level of education the NCE holders can handle effectively and that is the basic education level – from the pre-primary to junior secondary school.

So, you can’t expect a university graduate who has just bagged a diploma in education to be assigned to a crèche, nursery or primary, it won’t work.

As it will not be proper to ask a degree holder to be teaching at the primary level. This, he or she has not been trained for. It is the NCE holders that are specifically trained to take care of pupils at that level of education. That is the structure in the education curriculum.

Thus, converting colleges of education to universities is not a solution to teacher education in the country. The general apathy to teacher education is a major problem. This is one of the reasons the universities borne out of this process are also faced with shortage of students and are running non-education courses to attract more students.

The statistics from the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) also confirmed this narrative regarding the number of candidates who apply to study education courses these days. They are usually few and the same thing is applicable to agricultural-related courses. Even, students don’t go to the universities of agriculture to study agricultural courses. People neither want to become teachers nor farmers; I don’t know how Nigeria will progress with this mentality. The government will need to do something to make teacher education attractive, especially to the best brains.

Are you of the opinion that degree holders cannot teach in the primary school?

It is not all about teaching but quality delivery. Training and curriculum at the College of Education level are not the same with that of the university. NCE is an upgrade of the then teacher’s training college where students are trained with the pedagogies to handle children at the basic education level. This is a kind of training you cannot get in any other place. The curriculum of NCE is designed specifically for those who will teach pupils at the basic level of education. Their curriculum is totally different from that of the degree earners which is why it is not appropriate to have a complete wash away of the importance of NCE.

The Federal Government having realised this had to activate a law insisting on colleges of education running a dual mandates whereby they will be running both the NCE and degree programmes concurrently. By this, once you have completed your NCE programs, you can immediately proceed for a degree in the same college. This law was signed by President Bola Tinubu on June 12, 2023, so that colleges of education can begin to produce teachers for both the basic and the senior secondary school students.

How do you then react to the Lagos State government converting its two colleges of education to full-fledged universities?

The case of Lagos State is a peculiar one, and I will explain why. There are people from other parts of the country and even overseas trooping to Lagos on a daily basis to look for jobs, irrespective of the courses they studied in school. This means that the state will never be short of manpower because people are always available. Most of the people who are working in Lagos today didn’t go to school in Lagos. This is why we can’t compare the Lagos’ narratives with what obtains in other states of the country, where the majority of their workforce are sourced within their localities. They don’t really attract outsiders to study in their institution. Lagos can afford to experiment with anything because it’s enjoying the advantage of large concentration of manpower. This is why the state will continue to have enough NCE holders to teach at the basic level.

If you have the platform, what would you say to President Tinubu on these issues?

I will tell him that his decision and policy granting colleges of education to run dual mandate in awarding both NCE and degrees concurrently was the best for the country. I will enjoin him not to allow politics to rubbish that policy; rather, he should do all he could to make it work. Also, I will tell him that the idea of converting colleges of education to full-fledged universities is contradictory to the law he signed.

I will tell him that if we keep converting our colleges of education to universities, there will come a time there will be none left to convert and that will be the end of colleges of education in the country. This will be a great mistake for the country; countries that have toed such line have later regretted their action. We need to be careful as a nation when making policies. 

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Can you mention some of the countries that had toed this line?

The United Kingdom in 1992 converted all its polytechnic to universities. The country then was enjoying enough manpower because it was still a member of the European Union (EU) and also experiencing influx of other nationals just like the way Lagos State is maximising the influx of manpower from other parts of the world. Then, the middle level manpower was in high supply in the UK. The country could easily get any number of manpower needed. However, things changed after the UK exited the EU fold and many people also left the country and it couldn’t meet up with the needed manpower anymore. This is the reason the country is now running graduate apprenticeship whereby students are combining learning of trade with studies.

As a nation, we like copying things from other countries without having found out their suitability for our environment. That a policy or programme worked in one part of Nigeria does not mean it will work in other parts of the country.

Almajiri education, for instance, cannot work in the Southwest of Nigeria, whereas the system is effective in the North. The government policies or programmes are meant to be situational and not generalized; we must factor in peculiarity. It is always funny to me when the government talks about global best practices when introducing a policy. For instance, while it claims that the US has converted so and so colleges to full-fledged universities; it fails to mention that China has also converted its universities back to polytechnics.

If the Nigerian government focuses its attention on the conditions of service and conducive environment for teachers and make the teaching profession one of the highest paying jobs in the country, many brilliant Nigerians would have ordinarily loved to work as teachers.  Meanwhile, most people go into teaching as a last resort, when they could not get jobs elsewhere, this is the damage the government has done to the teaching profession. To now consider the conversion of colleges of education to universities as a solution to teacher education challenges in the country is not appropriate. It is a wrong prescription.

What efforts has COEASU made to advocate policy direction for the government on teacher education?

We do lots of advocacy whenever we have the opportunity but the government most times don’t bother. This is why a newly appointed minister would set the age limit of new university entrants at 16 and another will come tomorrow and peg it at 17 or 18. Is that the way to do things in an organised society? No, it is not. An organised society will not leave the entry age to start a school for that of a university.

It is not that we don’t have this kind of policy, but nobody is enforcing it all along and that is the reason many private schools don’t run primary six again. The government is not enforcing the policy because most of these schools are owned by top government officials.

Moreso, hardly will you see private universities in the country running education courses?  The reason is that nobody wants to spend up to N10 million or more to study education courses whereas, the public universities where you will pay far less to do that don’t have enough subscription of students to study education courses.

How can we then address all these?

Though the work is in the hands of all Nigerians, those in the corridors of political power have more work to do. They control the country’s resources and also make policies and create programmes. We are running after Boko Haram, bandits and other criminal elements that wreak havoc and also disturb the peace of the country, but the truth is that we will continue to run after them as long as we neglect teacher education. It is not only about sending children to school, but about meeting the right teachers. When we allow untrained teachers to be teaching at the primary school level, we are endangering the whole country because that is the foundation.. Hence, unless we do the right thing, to prosper as a nation will be difficult.