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Sacked teachers: Kaduna government to constrict holidays, extend lesson hours in schools short of teachers 

By Abdulganlu Alabi, Kaduna
10 March 2018   |   4:17 am
Following the mass purge of over 21 thousand primary school teachers, the Kaduna state government said it will constrict holiday periods and extend hour of lessons in schools lagging behind in educational activities, due to shortage of teachers.

A teacher attends to pupils

Following the mass purge of over 21 thousand primary school teachers, the Kaduna state government said it will constrict holiday periods and extend hour of lessons in schools lagging behind in educational activities, due to shortage of teachers.

The commissioner for education, Alhaji Ja’afaru Sani made the disclosure at a press briefing on the recruitment of new teachers in public primary schools, saying that the strategy when adopted will assist in filling the vaccum left by the relieved ones.

The sack of over 21 thousand teachers last year,  was said to have created vacuum in so many schools, where pupils barely have teachers assigned to tutor them in classrooms, The Guardian gathered.

According to the commissioner, he disclosed that some private teachers have volunteered to teach in  schools perceived to have very low ratio of teachers to students, as he said  the state government has successfully flushed out incompetent teachers.

He said , “we visited such schools along with your colleagues(journalists) last week. What we felt was that there were in adequate number of teachers, but schools those schools had received volunteers from other professional teachers that have either retired or are working in the private sector.

“We realise that due to the rigorous process that we followed ,   we will want to extend the period of learning some schools without sufficient number of teachers.

“ Let’s say if the school is closing by noon or 1 pm, we will extend it by 2 hours .And then we are considering  to even introduce Saturday classes,  so that when we adopt all this measures , at the end of the term if we still feel that there are a number of areas that the had not been covered, we will now at list touch some portion of the break period to enable us effectively cover.

“So we will be  systematic in the approach  by extending even the official hours of lesson, to reintroduce lectures on Saturday, then at the end of the term we will see how far we have gone if , there are still need for us , we can decide to extend the term and constrict the period of the leave.

The commissioner added that the posting of newly recruited  teachers will be based on need assessment that was conducted by State Universal Basic Education Board ( SUBEB), assuring that the state is steady to ensure rapid stability and improvement in primary education.

“ We have all reports from head teachers of the primary schools, where they are lacking, last week we visited some centers in Rigasa , we have seen that there are areas that are worst hit with the exit of the teachers and naturally attention will be to those areas.

“Last Monday when we went to council, it directed that we should ensure that we have 40 pupils per teacher , so already we have some local government with some excess number of teachers , the deployment will at least redistribute the man power to areas of shortfalls, where they have excess, we will  determine with discuss the numbers , and then move it to were they have shortfall.

“The 25 thousand that we are looking for , we had gotten 15 thousand now, we still have shortfall of 10 thousand. So this  ten thousand will come later, but right now , the existing teachers will be redistributed,” he concluded

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