The Nigeria Union of Teachers has said it is strongly opposed to the current admission policy which pegged Joint Admission Matriculation Board cut-off marks for students seeking admission into universities at 180 and above while those for Polytechnics and Colleges of Education was put at 150 and above.
The union described the policy as highly discriminatory and “calculated at demeaning and lowering the professional status of teachers with its concomitant negative effect on the attainment of quality education in the country.”
A statement by the NUT Secretary-General, Obong Obong on Tuesday in Abuja, said the policy is a great disservice to the education sector as it placed the best brains and students of distinction in other courses while those with lower grades were pushed into teaching.
The association called for an immediate reversal of the policy, stressing that the government must henceforth ensure that only brilliant students are admitted for training as teachers in all educational institutions in the county.
It said, “This is the practice in most advanced and developed countries, where it is considered that a teacher’s ability to disseminate knowledge to students is dependent on his sound intellectual capability.
“This is how government deliberately source for people with lower educational content to become teachers only to turn around and blame them for poor delivery. If this is allowed to stand, government should take full responsibility for the resultant shortcomings that may be observed in our educational institutions in future from those teachers.”
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