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The Federal Government has announced plans to train one million in-service teachers under its Accelerated Teacher Professional Programme (ATPP) as part of efforts to improve teaching quality and learning outcomes nationwide.
The Minister of Education, Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, disclosed this in Abuja when he received the newly appointed UNESCO Country Representative to Nigeria, Prof. Isaiah Barreto Da Rosa.
Alausa said the programme would strengthen teachers’ pedagogical skills and improve their capacity to effectively teach Nigerian children.
He described teacher quality as a critical component of the government’s ongoing efforts to transform the education sector.
“We are rolling out the Accelerated Teacher Professional Programme, which will train one million in-service teachers to improve their skills and capacity in the way they teach our children,” the minister said.
Alausa also disclosed that government interventions had helped return more than one million out-of-school children to classrooms in the past 20 months.
He said the government would continue to deepen its interventions to ensure that children currently out of school were returned to the education system.
Despite the progress, the minister acknowledged that Nigeria still had a significant out-of-school population, which he estimated could be between seven and eight million.
“That is still too many. Every single child out of school is still one child too many,” he said.
Alausa identified quality assurance, technical and vocational education and training (TVET), science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), reintegration of out-of-school children, data and digitalisation, and girl-child education as the government’s six priority areas.
He said data-driven planning would remain central to identifying gaps, targeting interventions and monitoring outcomes, describing evidence-based governance as essential for sustainable education reforms.
On possible collaboration with UNESCO, the minister welcomed technical support for teacher development but stressed that any assistance must be aligned with Nigeria’s education priorities.
“We are open to UNESCO coming to us and saying, ‘With your ATPP programme, we can help support you with a certain number of teachers.’ That is fine,” he said.
“But we will not accept UNESCO coming to tell us that this is what we need to teach our teachers.”
The minister said the Federal Government would continue to mobilise domestic resources and collaborate with development partners to ensure the effective implementation and sustainability of its education reforms.
