As 40,000 teachers wrap up the 2012 Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) in 109 centres nationwide on Saturday, the Education Minister, Prof Ruqayyat Ahmed Rufa?i has counselled them to put their new knowledge and pedagogical skills to good use in the classroom.
She was joined in admonishing the teachers by the Minister of State for Education, Chief Nyesom Wike, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs, Dr Precious Gbeneol, and the Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola, while flagging-off the programme last Friday at the Event Centre, Agidingbi, Lagos.
The training, being implemented by the National Teachers Institute (NTI), Kaduna, was organised for primary and junior secondary teachers teaching the four core subjects of English Language, Mathematics, Social Studies, Basic Science and Basic Technology. They will also be learning about language communication skills, effective classroom management, basic teaching methods, and information communication technology.
In her speech, Prof Ahmed Rufa?i said the workshop is part of the Continuing Professional Development of teachers ?which will assist and equip teachers to acquire, develop and refine their knowledge of subject matter and pedagogical skills for effective performance in the classroom. The re-training programme under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) was conceived to provide for the time-lag between pre-service training received by serving school teachers and the experience acquired during the service.?
She expressed confidence that participants would become better professionals afterwards.
Corroborating her, the Minister of State for Education, Chief Wike, said it would give teachers who did not get requisite training opportunity to update their skills, urging them to take the training seriously.
He said: ?The teacher who, for obvious reasons, could not afford to enroll for higher education is sure to be out of date with current trends in education practice. Unless such a teacher is supported through Continuing Professional Development Programmes (CPD) such as the MDGs workshops, he/she will not have any relevance in the present day classrooms. World over, the role of the teacher is gradually changing due to emerging trends and values in the society. It is in realization of this that the Federal Ministry of Education is committed to the re-training of teachers in order to continue to have qualitative teachers for our schools, most especially primary and junior secondary schools.?
Director-General of NTI, Dr Aminu Ladan Sharehu said the training is being funded from the Debt Relief Grant through the MDG Office.
He expressed confidence in the quality of resource persons and training manuals, which he said would ultimately help teachers improve learning outcomes of their pupils if they make good use of them.
?The workshop training manuals are self-instructional in nature, and the Institute, being an active and strong member of the consortium of Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) anchored by the National Open University, UK, has developed and integrated some TESSA modules into the re-training manuals in order to enrich them with numerous activities that are very vital in assisting to improving the performance of primary and junior secondary school teachers. These manuals will equally remain as reference and resource materials for teachers even after the workshops,? he said.
On her part, Dr Gbeneol said the MDGs office, has been able to train over 700,000 teachers from the debt relief grants since 2006.
?It is on record that during the first edition of the training programme in 2006, the institute trained 141,144 teachers across the nation. In the next edition of the programme which was held in 2008, another set of 156,592 teachers were trained. In 2009, a total of 120,000 teachers were also trained. In 2010, 140,000 teachers were trained while 125,000 teachers of both primary and junior secondary schools were trained in the year 2011. As the institute sets out to train another batch of 40,000 teachers this year, it is expected that 722,736 Nigerian teachers would have received the training since inception,? she said.
Thanking NTI for mounting quality workshops for teachers, Fashola, who was represented by the Lagos State Commissioner for Education, Mrs Olayinka, Oladunjoye said the state would partner with the Institute to improve its teachers.
Source: http://thenationonlineng.net/new/education/ministers-counsel-teachers-on-training/
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Travel and Leisure 
An excellent end of year for Romanian writer Dan Lungu (in picture), whose short story? ? 7 pm Wife ? has just been selected for the Best European Fiction 2013 collection published by Dalkey Archive Press, according to news agency Mediafax.