In a rather shocking news, about 1300
teachers in Kaduna have failed in tests
generally set for primary four pupils,
Commissioner for Education Alhaji Usman
Mohammed has revealed.
Mohammed made the shocking disclosure at
an education summit tagged “Education for
all is responsibility of all”, held at the
General Hassan Usman Katsina House
yesterday.
“A total of 1,599 teachers selected from
across the state were given primary four
tests in Mathematics and Basic literacy.
Only one of them scored 75 percent, 250
scored between 50 to 75 percent and 1,300
scored below 25 percent,” he said.
According to him, the same examination was
conducted for 1,800 primary school pupils
but that larger percent of them failed
woefully.
“We are not surprised about the
performance of the pupils because how can
they know it, when their teachers don’t know
it,” he added.
In his reaction, chairman of the Nigeria
Union of Teachers (NUT) in Kaduna,
Comrade Audu T. Amba said he was not
aware of the purported test which the
commissioner made reference to.
“I was supposed to be at the summit but I
could not make it. I don’t know when, where
and how the survey was conducted. Sometime
last year, they came out and said 18,000
teachers are unqualified but how many
teachers do we have in the state? Who
employed the unqualified teachers ? It is the
same government that employed them.
“If selfish interest is not removed in
recruitment, we will continue to have the
problem. If government is complaining, who
do we blame? The government should be
blamed for it,” he said in a telephone
interview.