The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has urged the Bauchi State Government to recruit the female teachers trained under its Female Teachers Training Service Scheme.
UNICEF recently sponsored the training of some female teachers at the State College of Education, Azare, under its Female Teachers Training Service Scheme.
The objectives of the initiative is to boost girl-child education but the beneficiaries are yet to be employed in the state.
Mr Bahnu Pathak, the Chief, Field Office, UNICEF, Bauchi, made the appeal at the opening of a two-day policy dialogue on Pre- Primary education in Bauchi on Wednesday.
The female teachers, Pathak said, were drawn from the 20 local government areas of the state and sponsored by UNICEF with the agreement of going back to their communities to work after graduation in order to enhance girl-child education especially in rural communities.
“All of them have graduated and they are waiting for employment by the state government.
“I am calling on the state government to employ these teachers so as to increase the number of our female teachers and improve girl-child education in the state,” the UNICEF official said.
Pathak said that the absorption of the female teachers into the primary school system would boost the education of girls in the state.
He explained that early childhood development has a lot of benefits to academic achievements, educational progression and attainment in life, stressing that there was imperative to invest early in the education of children in order to have useful citizens.
Also speaking, the state Commissioner for Education, Prof. Haruna Danwanka, represented by the Director Planning and Research, Alhaji Mohammed Umar, assured UNICEF of twhe state government’s commitment to the education sector.
“To ensure provision of quality education and development of school children, efforts have been intensified on policy formulation of children development and investing on Early Child Development Education (ECDE) in the state,” he said.
Danwanka said that the government would soon employ the UNICEF trained teachers and post them to various primary schools across the state.
He commended UNICEF and European Union (EU) for supporting the state in various sectors that improve development in the state.
Speaking earlier, Alhaji Baba Hamza, a Permanent member in the Bauchi State Universal Basic Education Board, (SUBEB) said that the state government was determined to improve the quality of education through in-service and pre-service teacher training programmes at pre-primary and primary levels.
He charged parents to support government effort in the development of quality pre-primary education that would give children the best start in life.(NAN)
