Biola Azeez Ilorin.
National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC) on Wednesday in Ilorin, Kwara state, commenced a five-day training programme for teachers in two core secondary school subjects of English Language and Mathematics.
The 116 participants in the training programme were drawn from the North-Central states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, as parts of measures to check poor performance of students in the two core subjects.
Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq, represented by the state commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development, Hajiya Saadatu Modibbo-Kawu, declared the training programme open.
In his welcome address, the executive secretary of NSSEC, Professor Benjamin Abakpa, said the commission was kicking off the first edition of re-skilling teachers after pilot testing the manuals on difficult concepts in English Language and Mathematics with teachers from selected public and private schools at FCT.
“This workshop becomes imperative because of the poor performance of learners, most especially in the two core subjects. The essence of the workshop is to identify the difficult concept in English Language and Mathematics and proffer possible pedagogical skills to tackle the menace facing the learners and take them from not knowing to solving equations and putting tenses together correctly”, he said.
In her goodwill message, the chairman of NSSEC, Ambassador Nimota Akanbi, noted that students’ performance in English Language and Mathematics in the external examinations had been consistently poor.
She charged the resource persons at the training programme to simplify the teaching methods of the two core subjects for the teachers, who would do the same for their students.
Akanbi praised Governor Abdulrazaq for his commitment to training and retraining of teachers in the state.
Declaring the programme open, Governor Abdulrazaq thanked the commission for choosing Kwara state as the host of the training programme.
He said the state had invested a lot of resources in the education sector, especially in the training and retraining of teachers.
The governor noted that the novel KwaraLEARN scheme had greatly impacted teaching and learning in schools in the state.
