Education Ministry organizes capacity building workshop for Mathematics, English teachers.

ABUJA (Federal Ministry of Education Report)

The Federal Ministry of Education is organising a capacity building workshop for Mathematics and English Language teachers in the Federal Government Colleges across the country to improve their teaching skills and competencies.

The Supervising Minister of Education, Ezenwuo Nyesom Wike stated this at the opening ceremony of the workshop held on Monday, 7th July, 2014 at the Mathematical Centre, Sheda in Abuja. He intensified that the workshop was organized to fulfill    the findings from the needs assessments carried out across the colleges in 2011 and 2012. Adding, the assessment identified poor performance of students in both Mathematics and English Language which accounted for poor overall results in the West African Senior School Certificate and NECO Senior School Certificate Examinations.

According to him, the two-week capacity building workshop will implore the inclusive education approach. He said that the Federal Ministry of Education considers numeracy and literacy as two fundamental knowledge domains that are critical success factors for students’ learning outcome. “The decision to adopt the inclusive approach in this capacity building workshop is to ensure that teachers are equipped to understand how to deliver these two knowledge domains to all children in our colleges, irrespective of their diverse abilities,” he said.

The Minister revealed that the massive rehabilitation of existing facilities and the provision of new ones have made remarkable impacts in the efforts to restore the colleges to their past reputation. He also opined that to ensure that the learning facilities provided in the colleges are utilized optimally, the President did approved the recruitment of more teachers and the regularization of the appointment of over 890 PTA teachers in the system. He reiterated the Ministry’s commitment to enhancing the quality of teachers in the colleges through continuous capacity development programmes.

While charging the participants to make good use of the opportunity provided by the workshop to sharpen their skills, the Minister urged them to share the new experience learned with their colleagues upon return to their various colleges.He also presented prizes to the 2013 three best performers in terms of teaching and learning of Mathematics and English Language using inclusive approach.  The prizes were offered to the Federal Government College – Enugu; the Federal Government Girls’ College – Owerri and Federal Science and Technical College – Yaba. Other prize recipients were the Federal Government College – Ido-Ani; Federal Science and Technical College – Uromi and the Federal Government College – Billiri.

The Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education, MacJohn Nwaobiala (Dr) in a remark said that the workshop is very important as it was designed to improve on the teaching skills and competencies of Mathematics and English Language teachers, so that the slow and fast learners could benefit tremendously. He added that teacher capacity is germane to quality education, urging the participants to ensure that they gain new experiences towards enhancing their service delivery.

The Director/Chief Executive of the National Mathematical Centre, Adewale R. T Solarin (Professor) in his speech noted that the participation of the Centre in the workshop was not accidental or mere coincidence as the Centre was established to cater for the dramatic decline in the production of teachers and specialists in Mathematics and Sciences at all the levels of the Nigerian educational system.

He informed that the capacity building workshop which commenced in 2013 has yielded positive impacts on the learning outcomes of students; noting the recent over 50% improvement in candidates’ performance in WAEC and NECO as testimony. He inferred that the Centre in 2002, worried by students’ poor performance in Mathematics in the WAEC and NECO examinations did organise a group of experts to research into the causes and to proffer remedies for the abysmal failure.

He further explained that the conception of the Mathematics Improvement Programme to create a new teaching methodology towards enhancing students’ performance in Mathematics was a result of the study.