ABUJA – Alhaji Jibrin Paiko, the Executive Secretary of National Commission for Mass Literacy, Adult and Formal Education on Wednesday in Abuja, clamoured for more funding to pay teachers.
Paiko told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in an interview that the commission lacked funds to pay teachers who were facilitating the adult and formal education sector.
“The major challenge we have is how to pay the teachers’ salary, we do not have funds to pay them,’’ he said.
According to him, under the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), it is the State Universal Basic Education Commission (SUBEC) that pays teachers’ salary and we do not have such packages.
“We believe that even our own programme and the states agencies for Mass Education Programme need to access the UBEC funds to pay the teachers’ salary.
“We are clamouring for a situation where the state commissioners of education will put SUBEC and agencies for mass education together in order to develop a work plan to access UBEC funds.
Paiko said that this would go a long way to funding the formal and non-formal education sub-sectors.
“Our facilitators are supposed to have minimum qualification of NCE but because of the inadequate funding, they are not properly paid, ‘’he said.
He said that the commission was also making efforts to improve and maintain the quality of teachers being engaged as facilitators.
The secretary said in terms of capacity building, 11 people were trained from each state as master trainers in a pilot programme and at the state level.
He said that 131 facilitators had so far been trained in four local governments in each of the states.
He said that the commission had also developed 17 trade areas vocational education curriculum for adult literacy education.[eap_ad_2]
According to him, we have sent it to the reference committee on education and it will be passed to the joint consultation committee on education which is coming up next week for adoption.
Paiko said that the commission was collaborating with UNESCO to revitalise adults and youth literacy in the country.
He said that through UNESCO partnership, the commission had received support from Procter and Gamble Company in sponsoring adult and youth literacy education programme on radio.
“We have a lot of packages for the radio programme, which include curriculum for out of school boys, girl-child and `almajiri’ integrated school children.
“We are now trying to use scale up the literacy by radio programme starting with FCT and Rivers.
“If we succeed in that and get more support, then it can be expanded to other parts of the country, ‘’he said.
He explained that the Federal Government had since 2011 released about a N1 billion to revitalise the programme.
Paiko said that a National Strategic Framework had been developed to ensure that major stakeholders were brought together to revitalise adults and youth literacy in the country. (NAN)[eap_ad_3]
