The Chairman of Plateau State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Mrs. Lyop Mang has said that the board had trained 37, 767 teachers in the last five years.
Mang disclosed this to newsmen yesterday in Jos as she added that;“Last year, we have trained about 5, 066 teachers and this year, 7, 650 were trained with funds from the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), but with the counterpart fund from 2008 to date, 37, 767 teachers had so far been trained”.
Mang said that the measure was aimed at improving the quality of teachers towards the delivery of qualitative education at the grassroots.
“We are moving into the school-based training where teachers are trained in smaller groups who would then train other teachers in their various schools, because we discovered that mass training of teachers was no longer effective”
Mang added that apart from the funds from UBEC in Plateau, there is also Japanese science project called “Strengthening of Mathematics Science Education in Nigeria (SMASE) which Kaduna and Niger are also beneficiaries.
“Under this programme, more than 17, 000 teachers were also trained with the aim of enhancing the ability of primary school teachers to conduct student-centered lessons in mathematics and other science subjects”.
The chairperson said that teacher development, especially at the primary and secondary schools’ levels had become paramount in ensuring quality education. And improving the quality of teachers, especially in mathematics and other science subjects is essential for national development,
Mang noted “Training and retraining of teachers would also improve quality of teachers in terms of attitude, strategies of instructions, and mastery of contents, resource mobilization and utilization of locally-available teaching materials for better performance.”
She however lamented that the funds sent from UBEC once in a year for teachers’ training was grossly inadequate in view of the dominance of the teacher in education delivery.
