Delta State Commissioner for Basic and Secondary Education, Mr Patrick Ukah, has said consistent capacity building initiative for teachers, especially in current teaching and learning processes is designed to enhance efficiency in service delivery.
Ukah, stated that this in Asaba while declaring open, a five- day training programme on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for 25 primary school teachers selected from each of the 25 local government areas in the state, organised by the National Teachers Institute (NTI), Kaduna.
He enumerated areas of focus of the training to include information and communication technology (ICT), language and communication skills, effective classroom management skills and basic teaching methods and techniques.
The commissioner described education as vital to the development of any society, noting that the 2030 SDGs vision 4 identified education as the cornerstone of development to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.
Represented by his Special Assistant, Mr Felix Ideh, the commissioner said that SDGs target in 2030 was to ensure that all girls and boys completed free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education.
He said that in recognising the importance of education, the state government organised a two-day education summit to x-ray challenges and proffer solutions to education in the state,
Mr Ukah said that some of the resolutions of the summit was the professional development of teachers through training and retraining, curriculum revision/enrichment and the production of new schemes of work based on new national curriculum for basic and post basic levels.
The State Coordinator of the NTI, Mrs Ifeoma Aniegbunem, said that the training was aimed at providing the teachers with the needed capacity to excel in their teaching activities just as she maintained that there was need for stakeholders to prioritise education.
One of the resource persons and Rector, Delta State Polytechnic, Ogwuashi-Uku, Prof Stella Chiemeke, said that in modern times, effective teaching requires that one embraces technological advancement.
She urged participants to take the training seriously as well as strive to impact on their colleagues who were not privileged to be selected.
Earlier, the Director-General (DG), NTI, Prof. Garba. Dahuwa Azare, who was represented by the South South Coordinator of the institute, Mrs C. E. Ogbejele, commended the state for prioritising the education sector and for its robust stakeholders’ participation in the workshop.
The DG stated that the institute was poised to improve the way teachers conducted themselves and stressed the need for paradigm shift from the traditional methods of teaching to technologically based approach.
Goodwill messages were received from Delta State Universal Basic Eduacation Board (SUBEB) and Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) Delta State Wing.