The World Bank reports that out of the eight billion people in the world, there are close to 85 million teachers. This includes 9.4 million in pre-primary schools, 30.3 million in the primary sector, 18.1 million in lower secondary and 14.0 million in upper secondary teaching, and 12.5 million in tertiary education. Added to these statistics, it said that by 2030, 68.8 million teachers will be needed for both primary and secondary education.
These already alarming statistics from the World Bank are underlined by the poor underfunding of public education in many neo-colonial and underdeveloped countries. Many government and capitalist politicians don’t see the importance of increasing expenditure on public education to 26% of the national budget as recommended by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Rather, this policy has been under attack.
According to “The Punch”, Nigeria has two million qualified and registered teachers. It will need 250,000 teachers annually to cater to the growing population of pupils. Since 2018, when this report was published, a lot of things have worsened. In many public schools, there are shortages of teaching staff. This is despite government claims to have to employed new teachers in Lagos and a few other states.
In Lagos no less than 1000 teachers have been inducted, the Lagos State government has claimed. Yet, many public primary and secondary schools are still lacking the required qualified teachers to teach. On average, there are insufficient teachers in some of these schools to impart knowledge in the overpopulated classrooms. The schools suffer from poor teaching facilities, the lack of good laboratory equipment, and libraries without books, which need regularly updating.
Many subjects lack the teachers needed to adequately deliver lectures to students. For other subjects where there are teachers, they are overburdened with the workloads that are designed to ensure they can teach the overcrowded classes. The worsening reality is that illiteracy is growing in public and secondary education. This requires attention.
Sadly, Nigeria is neither among the most literate countries in the world, or even in the list of the top 50 countries, according to their Literacy rate. New data from UNESCO show that there are 20 million children out of school in Nigeria. The lack of teachers and infrastructure in our schools is making the crisis endemic.
In many secondary schools, especially in science classes, students interested in embarking on projects are frustrated because there is no modern laboratory equipment to aid their vision and knowledge. The same predicament applies to students following arts and commercial courses, because of the inadequate funding of public education. Students in primary and secondary schools are not able to perform with the excellence that is expected.
Government propaganda blames teachers for the low academic performance by students. Although it is the poor facilities and outdated teaching methods, linked to inadequate budgetary allocations that affect the ability of teachers to deliver, and lead to the low academic performance of students. It is this that is responsible for the crises confronting the educational sector. Teachers must not be blamed for the government’s policies aimed at truncating public education.
This issue goes beyond the payment of teachers’ salaries as claimed by Governor Sanwo Olu at the Teachers’ day event. The government needs to use state resources to improve the teaching skills of teachers by training and retraining them. This training must not be at the teacher’s expense, but paid for by the government’s budgetary allocation to public education. Besides, such an initiative can only be possible when there is a socialist government based on workers’ management and control.
The underfunding of public education is also reflected in the underdeveloped nature of Nigeria’s economy and industrialization. Federal and State governments are no different, they both have policies undermining the funding of education. They do not see the importance of government support for the educational sector, leaving teachers in public schools to teach in harsh conditions and overpopulated classrooms with poor facilities.
As part of the World Teacher’s Day event held in Lagos, the “Movement for A Socialist Alternative” intervened at two centres — in Ikeja and Ajeromi Ifelodun.
This occasion was used by bourgeois politicians, who attended to present their ambitions of contesting the 2023 general election. They used Teachers’ Day on 5 October to assure teachers present at the event that they will improve their welfare. The speeches of the state union leadership attest to this fact. They assured the teachers that the government of Sanwo Olu, if re-elected in February 2023 general election, will “perform, that the administration shall continue to pay teachers their salaries when due”.
However, nothing was said about improving the quality of primary and secondary education, or about solving the low teaching staff numbers in those schools lacking teachers. Nor did they address the harsh teaching conditions.
The politicians where able to capitalize on Teachers’ Day in this way as part of their strategy, because the trade union leaders don’t see the political implication of giving credence to capitalist politicians by allowing them to act in this way. This will only be changed when workers take control of the affairs of the trade union democratically, with democratic decisions taken in the interest of workers.
These politicians, who represent capitalist ambition, need to use the union to seek workers’ support, especially as their policies are colliding with workers’ interests and welfare. Teachers and union officials in the trade unions must understand the importance of October 5 and why it must be used instead to allow workers the opportunity to discuss their affairs, and how to improve working and living conditions. October 5 is like May Day and workers must begin to utilise such events in order to develop real demands to confront government policies.
We in the MSA stand in solidarity with the National Union of Teachers on the occasion of World Teachers Day. Our solidarity is to identify with workers in this sector and stand with them in support of each of their demands. Workers’ democracy in the trade union is more fundamental to achieving workers’ interest than the bureaucracy’s smothering.
We urged teachers to engage in its union and ensure participation in it, to use it to fight for their interests against government policies. By doing this, we will be able to pressurise the government to increase the allocation to public education that will help to increase the workforce in public schools, and improve teachers’ welfare, and adequately fund public education. Teachers in primary and secondary schools must unite, combining their strength, be democratically active in their union, and ultimately use the union to demand and organise initiatives in the interests of the workers.
