By Ahmed Ilallah
The last weekend was dominated by the drama of Jigawa J-Teach. The efforts of the state government to migrate the casual teachers to permanent appointment becomes knotty. Before getting into the whole scenario, let’s look at these.
As a student of Measurement and Evaluation in Education, you are asked to select the best 30 out of 45, which method are you going to apply?
If this question applies to education, whoever demonstrated in the decision of the Jigawa State Government of the issue of J-Teach, then, he or she has technically disqualified himself/herself from being a good teacher.
Before analyzing the shrewd of the plight, let’s refresh our memories of the facts of basic education in Jigawa State.
For many years, the system has been engulfed with three treacherous factors, the teacher quality, the teacher quantity, and shortcomings of monitoring and supervision. The present government inherited these problems.
This has resulted in poor outcomes for the pupils, a primary school graduate struggles to make and simple sentence.
These issues are major causes of employing unqualified teachers and politicizing the system.
Thanks, to the citizens of the state through their CSOs in identifying the cause and assisting the government in solving it. They developed the agenda settings and gave priority to basic education as a foundation of all the education.
Thanks, to the present administrator under the steering of Malam Umar Namadi and the governor himself for having a 12-point agenda with education as a priority.
The fiction of the synergy is firstly, the immoral attempt by the politicians to use the angle for their selfish interest.
If people fail to differentiate politics, democracy, and governance and make the synergy for the good of the system, the problem will be there permanently.
The candidates were simply misled by this segment of the politicians, who at all cause trying to conflict with the efforts of the present administration.
While the facts we will know about some of these teachers are:
Some of the teachers are either not qualified for the job or they do not possess the NCE Certificate, as the prerequisite of employment.
Politics has played a negative role in their employment in the J-Teach.
An independent investigation has also revealed that some of the teachers are not doing the work themselves, some are not living in the state or the area they are posted, the work is done in proxy by their relatives. This typically violates the motive of the J-Teach.
These and other issues scared the untrusted candidates of following the due process of obtaining the permanent appointment.
All the patriotic citizens of Jigawa should partner with the government in the interest of the pupils and the education system, not the interest of a few individuals.
The government should not be indulged by the pressure of undesirable elements to do the wrong thing.
The interest of the pupils, the system, and the state is a top priority.
Ilallah writes from Jigawa and can be reached via alhajilallah@gmail.com
