The Nigeria Union of Teachers has said it is strongly opposed to the current admission policy which pegged Joint Admission Matriculation Board cut-off marks for students seeking admission into universities at 180 and above while those for Polytechnics and Colleges of Education was put at 150 and above.
The union described the policy as highly discriminatory and “calculated at demeaning and lowering the professional status of teachers with its concomitant negative effect on the attainment of quality education in the country.”
A statement by the NUT Secretary-General, Obong Obong on Tuesday in Abuja, said the policy is a great disservice to the education sector as it placed the best brains and students of distinction in other courses while those with lower grades were pushed into teaching.
The association called for an immediate reversal of the policy, stressing that the government must henceforth ensure that only brilliant students are admitted for training as teachers in all educational institutions in the county.
It said, “This is the practice in most advanced and developed countries, where it is considered that a teacher’s ability to disseminate knowledge to students is dependent on his sound intellectual capability.
“This is how government deliberately source for people with lower educational content to become teachers only to turn around and blame them for poor delivery. If this is allowed to stand, government should take full responsibility for the resultant shortcomings that may be observed in our educational institutions in future from those teachers.”
The statement noted that the nation still have in abundance very brilliant and effective teachers in service who it said should be nurtured for effective service delivery.
This, the NUT added, was the reason it had been calling for the raising of the retirement age of teachers in primary and secondary schools to 65 years in order to tap maximally from “their fountain of knowledge.”
With such experienced teachers retained in service in primary and secondary schools, the union said young teachers would be able to fall back on them for mentoring.
It said, “We however wish to warn that the teaching profession must not be made an all-comers affair.
“The glorious old days of sound educational delivery cannot be reenacted by lowering admission standard for student teachers. The government must immediately address this abnormally in order to address the continuous decline in the quality of education.”
On point
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