We defeated NUT without recalling sacked teachers – El-Rufai

Kaduna State Governor Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai has boasted that the state has secured a major victory for public education, defeating an indefinite strike by the Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT, without recalling any of the sacked teachers.

In his first public reaction to the collapse of the NUT strike, Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai said that there was no time to dwell in the euphoria of removing trade union obstacle to better standards in the education sector.

Governor El-Rufai made the expression in a statement signed by his Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Samuel Aruwan, at a meeting with the 23 local government administrators and their Education Secretaries.

He said that the focus must now be on implementing the education reforms in a way that upholds standards and improves the welfare of teachers.

At the meeting, SUBEB reaffirmed plans for the first batch of new teachers to be appointed by February, 2018, pointing out that interviews for applicants who passed the recruitment test conducted on 20th December 2017 would commence on Wednesday, 24th January 2018.

The interviews according to the statement would be conducted across the 23 local government areas by panels comprising experienced personnel from the Teacher Development Programme and other professionals.

The governor disclosed that the Education Reforms in the state required that a commitment to standards be sustained and new incentives provided for teachers.

Among the incentives would be a new salary scale for teachers and provision of houses for teachers posted to rural schools.

El-Rufai observed that the difficulty in securing decent accommodation in rural areas had led to an over-concentration of teachers in urban centres, stressing that the Ministry of Education would provide designs for construction buildings with at least six flats for teachers and a bungalow for head-teachers in rural schools.

On education standards, he said that a law has been passed to establish the Quality Assurance Board to uphold standards in schools, while the state university, KASU has been directed to establish an Institute of Education to provide continuous training for teachers.

He further said that the current recruitment exercise would prioritise teachers of English, Mathematics and the Sciences.

To expand the production of such teachers, the governor disclosed that the College of Education, Gidan-Waya would adjust its curriculum so that most of its products are trained in Primary Education Studies, Mathematics, English and the Sciences.