.jpg)
If Monday Tommy Joshua, a professor of Measurement and Evaluation, and current executive secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) has his way, Colleges of Education (COEs) in Nigeria will soon award degrees up to doctorate level without necessarily being affiliated to any university or changing their names to universities. PAUL CHIAMA writes on the professor’s call for COEs to assume degree-awarding status at the 25th anniversary of the commission in Abuja recently.
Colleges of Education in Nigeria are known to be awarding Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) which is the minimum qualification for teachers seeking to teach in the first nine years of basic education in Nigeria. However, the helmsman at the NCCE which has the statutory function of regulating Colleges of Education and NCE-awarding institutions, Professor Monday Tommy Joshua, has made a strong case for a change to be effected in this direction.
Joshua shared his thoughts on the commission’s yearning for Teacher Education in Nigeria with an audience which can be said to be apt for the unveiling of such a big set of dreams for Teacher Education in the country. The newly-sworn in Minister of Education, Alhaji Adamu Adamu, along with the Minister of State for Education, Professor Anthony Anwuka, as well as the Ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Dr (Mrs) Shade Yemi-Esan were all in attendance, performing their first official assignments after their swearing in and posting to the Ministry by President Muhammadu Buhari.
He said, “We dream that one day, all Teacher Education Programmes in the Nigerian education system, at whatever level, will be gathered into one Commission and Supervisory Agency to make for more coordinated approach and attack at teacher education in Nigeria, which is the bedrock for the quality education we all desire”, he said.
That is not currently the situation and the NCCE boss is advocating for a change in line with the mantra of the current government.
“We also desire that one day, our mature Colleges of Education will be given mandate or legal backing to run like Teachers’ Colleges in Columbia, USA or other teachers colleges abroad, running NCE programmes, Bachelor degrees, Masters and Doctorate degree programmes of their own without affiliation to existing universities, and without necessarily changing their names to universities”.
Professor Joshua’s third yearning for Teacher Education in Nigeria had to do with those who teach the teachers: “We dream about academic staff in this Teachers’ Colleges rising to become professors of the same standard with professors in today’s universities. These are dreams and we are praying that they will become realities soonest.”
Professor Joshua’s dreams was applauded by stakeholders at the event, including a former executive secretary of the National Universities Commission (NUC), a sister- agency to the NCCE, Professor Peter Okebukola, and three former executive secretaries of the NCCE, who in turn emphasised the importance of education in general and teacher education in particular, calling on all hands to be on deck to ensure education takes its pride of place in the nation’s scheme of things.
The NCCE may not have been in the front burner like the NUC (which oversees the universities) or the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) which regulates Polytechnics and Colleges of Technologies in the country but it has brought sanity in the establishment and operations of Colleges of Education and other NCE-awarding institutions in the country.
In the words of the NCCE boss, “Before establishment of the National Commission for Colleges of Education in 1989, teacher education in Nigeria was operated in a haphazard manner. There was non-uniformity in the operations of Colleges of Education in terms of admission requirements, and nature and modes of assessment. Proprietors of schools and colleges set their own standards, depending on their needs, economy and belief system; there was disparity in admission requirements of NCE holders in Universities as affiliates of some universities than their counterparts from non-affiliate institutions.
It was difficult to compare an NCE graduate from a college in Sokoto or Lagos to an NCE graduate from a college in Enugu or Obudu symbolically. It was more of ‘anything goes’ in Teacher Education sector at the sub-degree level”.
Following its establishment, Joshua said the NCCE evolved six major areas of focus which included determination and unification of the academic content of NCE programmes; determination of the personnel requirements to run programmes, and the determination of the basic minimum facilities requirement to run programmes. The other areas of focus include the prescription of entry requirements for new admission, the prescription of mode of evaluation, as well as continuous assessment of students’ performance in the Colleges, as well as the determination of the process and procedures of accreditation/re-accreditation of programmes and institutions.
With an initial staff strength of 33 which has now grown to 233, Joshua said the National Commission for Colleges of Education oversees a total 146 COEs and NCE-awarding institutions, comprising 21 Federal Colleges, 47 State Colleges, 55 Private Colleges, nine polytechnics offering NCE and 14 other NCE-awarding institutions.
It can be recalled that the federal government has since adopted the NCE as the minimum teaching qualification in the Nigerian public school system by the federal government and begun the implementation of a nine-year Basic Education programme. The NCCE boss said this places the responsibility of producing teachers for the Basic Education level (six years of Primary Education and three years of Junior Education) on the NCCE.
“The National Policy of Education in Nigeria has declared that ‘no nation can arise above the quality of its teachers’. We at the NCCE have accepted the onerous duty of determining and ensuring quality in Teacher Education and in the production of NCE teachers in the Nigerian nation. This obligation the Commission has been able to execute these past 25 years. In fact, the NCCE has adopted a slogan ‘Quality Teachers: Pride of the Nation’. This was well chosen to guide every policy, practice and activity of the Commission in paying one main debt it owes the Nigerian nation, namely the production of quality teachers for Basic Education”, he added.
“We have mastered and we treasure the sacred mandate of the commission. We have keyed into the reforms agenda of the NCCE, and we are vigorously pursuing policies and programmes that are putting the Colleges of Education on their toes in pursuit of quality Teacher Ediucation”, the executive secretary said, adding that his team will not relent in their efforts in ensuring that teachers produced from the country’s Colleges of Education and other NCE-awarding institutions meet the minimum standard of quality, probity, responsibility and scholarship.
