The Jigawa State Government has announced plans to conduct a Computer-Based Test, CBT, for all classroom teachers in the state as part of efforts to assess their teaching competence and enhance the quality of education.
Chairman of the State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, Prof. Haruna Musa, disclosed this while briefing newsmen in his office on Wednesday.
He said the CBT is in line with the Jigawa State Governor, Malam Umar Namadi’s, vision to improve the quality of teaching and learning in the state.
He noted that the move became necessary given the teaching and learning crises the state has faced for years.
According to him, “we have employed several initiatives that will address learning poverty in the state, while the state is making efforts to ensure that teachers that are not going to school to teach go back to classrooms; at the same time, we are working to improve the quality of teachers.”
Prof. Haruna explained that the board plans to conduct training for all 10,000 teachers, and to avoid duplication. The CBT was introduced to identify the specific training needs of each teacher.
He stressed that the exercise is not aimed at punishing, sacking or creating inconvenience for teachers but at improving their quality and skills.
“After the assessment we are likely to come with three outcomes, competent, semi competent and poor teachers.
“The competent teachers are those with content and skill knowledge, semi competent are those teachers with content knowledge but they don’t have skill to teach. For this category, we will use the resources available and see how we can train them in order to improve their skills.
“The last category are those who don’t have both the content knowledge and skill . We are going to use available colleges of education in the state to give them special training for them to migrate from poor teachers to semi competent teachers.”
The board chairman noted that the portal for all 10,000 permanent and pensionable teachers to register and submit their credentials would soon be opened.
He solicited the cooperation of teachers for the success of the exercise.
