Standing With Teachers

Recently, the world marked  Teachers’ Day under the theme “Standing with Teachers: 60 Years of Protecting the Profession, Advancing Its Status and Shaping Our Futures.” The theme recalls the 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation on the Status of Teachers, which asked governments to guarantee educators dignity, decent pay and safe working conditions. Six decades later, few countries have failed that test as visibly as ours. In Nigeria, standing with teachers has become a ritual of speeches delivered on the first Monday of October, after which the classroom returns to its familiar place at the bottom of the budget.

Consider the money. Education took 9.3 per cent of total government expenditure in 2015. By 2023 the figure had fallen to 3.6 per cent, a long way below the 15 to 20 per cent international benchmark. A nation that cuts the share of its spending on learning by more than half in eight years is telling its children exactly what it thinks of their future. The consequence is visible in public schools across the country, where teachers go months without salaries and allowances, and where some earn less than the official minimum wage that the same governments proclaim with such pride.

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The teachers themselves have made the demand plain. Speaking at Eagle Square in Abuja recently  the National Deputy President of the National Union of Teachers, Kizito Kalu, reminded the Federal Government that a special salary scale for teachers in basic and secondary schools was approved in 2022, under former President Muhammadu Buhari, alongside other welfare packages. Four years on, implementation has yet to begin. The union also pointed to overcrowded classrooms, inadequate furniture and insufficient instructional materials.

We share that frustration. Teachers cannot be asked to perform without the tools, nor to wait patiently on a government that has let a signed approval gather dust.

The results are written in the examination scripts of our children. UNICEF’s 2022 assessment found that 49 per cent of Primary 3 pupils and 67 per cent of Primary 5 pupils failed to reach minimum proficiency in mathematics. By JSS2, more than eight in ten learners had fallen short. No teacher, however gifted, can reverse that damage in a classroom with no library and no working laboratory, where electricity is a rumour and the ratio of pupils to teacher can approach 100 to one. Overcrowding of that kind makes individual attention impossible, and individual attention is where learning happens.

Access tells the same story. UNICEF estimates that about 10.5 million children aged five to 14 are out of school, and only about 61 per cent of children aged six to 11 attend primary school regularly. The Federal Government says it has returned more than one million children to classrooms in the past 30 months, and we acknowledge the effort. Yet the same government admits it is still conducting a nationwide exercise to establish a reliable figure. A country that cannot say with confidence how many of its children are outside school cannot plan for the teachers those children will need. Planning begins with counting, and counting is the least that a serious government owes the next generation of pupils and the teachers who will stand before them.

The picture at the higher end is no kinder. Nigeria now has over 328 universities and 3,756 technical and vocational institutions, and that expansion deserves credit, since many of those institutions did not exist a generation ago. But more than two million candidates chase university places every year while only 500,000 to 700,000 find one, leaving roughly 1.3 million at the gate in a typical cycle. Those who get in meet lecturers who have been driven to strike so often that a study puts the cost of national ASUU stoppages between 1988 and 2022 at six years and three months. That is close to one academic year in every five, surrendered to disputes that governments could have settled by keeping their word.

Beyond pay and facilities lies a quieter crisis of flight. In parts of the north and in many rural communities, teachers have worked under the shadow of kidnapping and school closures. Those who can leave do so, for private schools and non-governmental bodies, or for countries that value what they know. Bright graduates have noticed, and many now avoid the profession altogether. A society that turns teaching into a last resort should not be surprised when it harvests last-resort results. The arrival of artificial intelligence sharpens the point. Technology will serve classrooms only where teachers have been trained to use it and paid enough to stay.

It is in that context that the message from the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, should be read. She urged policymakers and society to protect the teaching profession, improve teachers’ welfare and elevate their status. We agree with every word. The difficulty is that the people she addresses already hold the powers required to act, and have held them for a long time.

Needless to say, education is the one investment no government can afford to postpone. Federal and state authorities should publish the full amount owed to teachers in arrears and clear it within a stated period, and the Federal Government should begin implementing the 2022 special salary scale without further delay. The Federal Government should set a date by which education spending reaches the international benchmark, and governors, who run most primary and secondary schools, should commit to the same in writing, with budget lines that citizens and the press can inspect every quarter. Teachers must be recruited in numbers that match enrolment, trained continuously and protected where schools are under threat.

Teachers’ Day will pass, as it does every year, with its ceremonies and its handshakes. The test of this government will come on the days that follow, when the salary is due and the classroom is full. A country that will not pay its teachers has already decided what kind of citizens it wants.