Nigeria’s primary school teacher strength fell by more than a quarter after the Covid crisis, complicating already scarce efforts to fix the country’s ailing education system.
A senior education official said Monday Nigeria recorded a substantial 29% decline in the number of primary school teachers since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis.
Hamid Boboyyi, executive secretary of the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), which oversees Nigeria’s free and compulsory basic education programme, said there were fewer teachers to cater to 45 million pupils.
Key numbers to note
Nigeria has some of the highest primary school teacher-to-pupil ratios in the world.
UBEC’s previously known figure showed the country there were 915,593 teachers for 32 million students in primary schools, a 35 to one ratio. The figure announced by Boboyyi suggests something even more alarming: a ratio of 49 pupils to one teacher.
Either of the two figures suggest the country is dealing with major teacher shortage problem.
The United States and United Kingdom had a pupil to primary school ratio of 15 in 2017, according to the World Bank. Brazil and Indonesia, within Nigeria’s population bracket, had a ratio of one teacher to 20 and 17 pupils respectively.
The UBEC chief said it would be difficult to deliver high quality education except Nigeria pays, motivates and compensates teachers adequately.
What he said
Speaking at a meeting between UBEC and the organised private sector, he said the N100 billion the federal government spends annually on basic education was no longer adequate.
“Resources from the federal government alone cannot run the system. Nigeria has more than 45 million children in basic education sub-sector and with this number, we require the necessary classrooms.
“A state may get a maximum of may be N3 billion at the best of times, but N3 billion cannot take care of its educational needs,’’ he said.
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