Dr. Folasade Yemi-Esan, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, has said that without quality teachers in the country, achieving global competitiveness in education would remain a mirage.
Yemi-Esan said this on Tuesday in Abuja at the opening ceremony of the 76th Joint Consultative Committee on Education plenary meeting.
She said: “Education is one of the pillars for economic growth and development and except we have quality teachers, the goal of global competitiveness cannot be achieved.”
According to her, the country is undergoing rapid political, social and economic reforms and quality education will help to actualize the reform.
She said that quality teachers was critical to improving academic performance just as poor quality teachers impacted negatively on student development.
Yemi-Esan maintained that infrastructural development and excellent educational policies without quality and sufficient teachers were meaningless in every society.
The permanent secretary also said that the Federal Government through the Universal Basic Education Commission was poised to implement Teachers Development Programme across the country.
Yemi-Esan added that improving the capacity of those who might want to engage in teaching as a profession and continuous development of professional skills once employed, were strategies to ensure teachers’ development.
She further added that effective teachers once recognized, would be promoted while ineffective ones would be dropped.
The Permanent Secretary, however, said that the demand for teachers worldwide would rise to 25.8 million, to achieve universal primary education by 2020.
This, Yemi-Esan said, was the reason the Federal Government had commenced modalities for the recruitment of 500,000 unemployed graduates as teachers.
In her remarks, Magdalene Anene-Maidoh, the Director, Educational Planning Research and Development, urged participants to deliberate on issues that would ensure the actualization of the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.