Geoffrey Oyeama, the Nigerian Foreign Affairs Minister, Geoffrey Oyeama has decided to retrain and empower Enugu State public school through the Kwusike Foundation, IgbereTV reports.
The Training Coordinator of the foundation, Mr Uche Gariel said this in an interview with journalists on Saturday, during a three days training of selected teachers in the state.
Gabriel said that the training became necessary following the urgent need to equip the teachers with modern instructional techniques with a view to improving learning outcome.
He said that the minister was worried by the seeming decay in the sector and had undertaken to conduct regular training for all public school teachers in the state.
The coordinator said that participants at the training would in due time be equip with instructional kits like laptops and other relevant electronic instructional devices.
He said the state government needed to be applauded for recruiting more teachers, adding that such efforts needed to be followed with a routine training and retraining exercises.
According to him “It is this gap that Kwusike Foundation has come to fill. We see it as a challenge to make public schools better than what it is right now.
“The quality of teaching determines the quality of students produced by the system because teachers can not give what they do not have,” he said.
Gabriel said that the pilot phase of the training involved 50 teachers drawn from schools in the state capital.
He said that the greatest investment any government could make was to give good education to its people, adding that the foundation was opened to collaborating with the state government to do more.
Also, Director of School Services, Enugu State Universal Basic Education Board (ENSUBEB), Mrs. Julie Ugwu commended the minister for sponsoring the training.
Ugwu said that Onyeama by the gesture had shown himself to be a true Nigerian and lover of education.
She said that the current administration in the state had employed over 2000 teachers, adding that the training would add value to what the teachers were doing.
She said that the board was pleased with the intervention of the minister as such would improve the quality of education in the state.
“Government can not do everything. That is why we encourage community involvement in the development of our schools,” Ugwu said.
In her remarks, The facilitator of the training, Dr. Obiageli Nnamani, said that due to some reasons, public schools seemed to be the most disadvantaged in terms of quality manpower.
Nnamani said that deliberate efforts needed to be made to prepare young school leavers to face the future with optimism.
“The foundation is investing in public schools because they are the disadvantaged unlike the private schools that are putting in a lot of money to get results.
“In the next 50 years, we will not be in the center stage and it is the children we have trained with what we have that will be leading us,” she said.
Obiageli said that research had shown that most teachers had yet to grasp modern teaching techniques which necessitated the training.
