Robert Awokuse
Education consultancy firm, Tutelage Educational Services, has promised to train no fewer than one million teachers across Nigeria in line with the Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs.
The Principal Consultant Lanre Badru stated this at the 9th edition of “Much More than a Teacher’s Training” held recently in Ibadan, Oyo state, Nigeria.
Badru said the target of the organization was to train about one million teachers in Nigeria for free, in line with the vision 2030 of the global goals.
“Our target is to expose teachers to the global perspectives of education and to what is done all over the world between the year 2017 that we started and year 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations.”
Badru noted that his Tutelage Educational Services has so far trained close to 100,000 teachers, while expressing optimism that the figure would hit one million by 2025.
“We have decided to make Nigeria our base in order to fulfill the mandate and make sure that the nation’s education system becomes a global standard by educating our teachers.
“Nigerian teachers are still practicing the traditional teaching method, and traditional education system is when teachers do not know education best practices and how education business is to be channeled.
“Much More Than Just a Teacher’s Training” is a mandate to expose many teachers; we have chosen to make the difference, and the difference is for our teachers to know more, because when they know more, they will be able to perform better and this will make a difference in our nation.”
The education expert also called on the State Government to embrace and collaborate with the program, saying that this will make a difference in the educational system of Nigeria.
The Chairman of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS), Ibadan North Local Government, Pastor Oladejo Richard in his remarks, noted that the government is not doing enough when it comes to the issue of training of teachers, adding that NAPPS partnered with the organizers to ensure that teachers were exposed to knowledge.
“Many teachers nowadays do not know the right thing to do, but we believe that if we can train them, it will enhance learning of our students. Training teachers means training our future, because teachers will assist us to train our children who are the leaders of tomorrow, so training them means preparing a better future for our children.
“It is necessary to do up-to-date training for teachers. We need to update them and the best way teachers can be updated is by training them regularly because teaching in class is changing everyday, that is why teachers need to change the way they teach in classrooms to a global world.”
One of the participants at the program, Sheriff Apanpa, an administrator from Peace Land Preparatory School, Moniya, Ibadan, noted that the program was a right step in the right direction.
Apanpa argued that if the program had been introduced long before now, it would have reduced incompetency, thereby increasing transmission of knowledge to students in schools across the country.
“Education program is not something you can reap the dividends of immediately you plant it. Government should collaborate because this training will help them to know and to monitor the actual number of teachers to be trained, and it will also assist to boost the performance of students.”
