Kaduna Govt. challenges teachers to be innovative

From: Femi Oyelola, Kaduna

The Kaduna State Government has challenged public school teachers to write books and come up with innovative ideas that would improve the quality of teaching and learning in schools.
The Commissioner for Education, Dr Shehu Makarfi, gave the challenge at the end of a five-day training for secondary school teachers in Kaduna, organised in collaboration with the Africa Federation of Teaching Regulatory Authority (AFTRA).
Makarfi said the state government would support any teacher that writes resource books to improve teaching and learning, as well as books to share classroom experience.
He added that teachers need to also come up with innovative ideas that would improve learning outcomes in public schools, adding that the government would ensure that such ideas come to fruition.
According to him, any teacher with a five-year classroom experience should be able to write a resource book for teaching and learning and equally write about his experience to inspire others.
“We are losing the African touch in our educational system because teachers are not writing, but largely depending on foreign books and innovations from their counterparts in other parts of the world.
“As teachers, we need to be creative and innovative in coming out with new ways to improve teaching delivery and learning outcomes in classrooms.
“I urge you to go into writing and the ministry will support you. Come up with ideas to improve teaching and we will support you to develop the ideas into reality,” he said.
The commissioner said that the government would continue to invest in teachers’ capacity through training and retraining.
He added that there was the need for a tracking tool to monitor the impact of the training on learning outcomes to ensure value for money.
“While we will continue to train our teachers, we also want to see how the trainings are impacting the learners,” he said.
He disclosed that the ministry was working out a partnership with a foreign company to expose primary school pupils to coding and computer programming at an early age.
Mrs Salome Kennedy, Desk Officer, AFTRA in the state, said the main objective of the training was to improve the quality of teaching and learning in public schools.
Kennedy, the Director Academic, Kaduna State Scholarship and Loans Board, said that the training was the second in the series of training planned in partnership with AFTRA for teachers.