Kwara State Governor, Dr Abdulfatah Ahmed has called on stakeholders in the education sector to map out strategies for taking Basic Education Teachers’ salaries off local government councils in the country.
Governor Ahmed said this when the Executive Secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission, Alhaji Dikko Sulyman and his management team visited him at the Government House, Ilorin.
According to Gov. Ahmed, local government councils lack capacities to finance the payment of basic education teachers’ salaries, especially with the decline in allocations from the federation account.
Governor Ahmed also called for the adjustment of the present Revenue Allocation Formula which favours the federal government at the expense of the state and local government tiers.
Speaking on other problems confronting education in the country, Gov. Ahmed called for the convocation of a national summit on how to reform education at the primary, secondary and tertiary levels. “It is important that a strong summit is held to improve the availability of school infrastructure; accessibility and the quality of teachers. It has to be taken from a national perspective”, he said.
He expressed concern about the quality of teachers produced by the Colleges of Education designed to serve the basic education level, stressing that the curricular at the Colleges of Education level were not designed for basic education level. According to him, the curriculum of the defunct Grade Two School was better designed to teach pupils at the primary unlike what prevails now.
The Executive Secretary of UBEC, Alhaji Dikko Suleiman said the commission has initiated a number of infrastructure development programmes in the basic education level across the state.
These, he said, included the renovation of dilapidated school structure, two electronic libraries, and seven Almajir schools among others.
He commended the Kwara State Government for the prompt repayment of its counterpart funding for the projects.
