The Federal Government has unveiled plans to train one million serving teachers nationwide under its Accelerated Teacher Professional Programme (ATPP) as part of measures to raise teaching standards and improve learning outcomes.
The Minister of Education, Dr Maruf Tunji Alausa, disclosed this on Tuesday in Abuja while receiving the newly appointed UNESCO Country Representative to Nigeria, Professor Isaiah Barreto Da Rosa.
Alausa said the initiative would focus on strengthening teachers’ pedagogical abilities and equipping them with the capacity required to effectively teach Nigerian children.
“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,” he said.
The minister said the programme was a key component of the government’s broader efforts to transform the education sector, stressing that the quality of teachers remained critical to achieving meaningful improvements in learning.
He also disclosed that government interventions had helped return more than one million out-of-school children to classrooms within the last 20 months.
“Today, in the last 20 months alone, we have moved over one million children from the streets back to school. We will continue to deepen our strategy to ensure that every child is taken off the streets and returned to school,” Alausa said.
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Despite the reported progress, Alausa acknowledged that the country still had a major education challenge, with Nigeria’s out-of-school population estimated to remain between seven and eight million.
“That is still too many. Every single child out of school is still one child too many,” he said.
According to the minister, the government’s education reform agenda is centred on six priority areas: quality assurance; technical and vocational education and training (TVET); science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); the reintegration of out-of-school children; data and digitalisation; and girl-child education.
He further explained that the government was increasingly relying on data to identify gaps, design targeted interventions and assess their impact, describing evidence-based governance as essential to achieving lasting reforms in the sector.
On the proposed partnership with UNESCO, Alausa welcomed the organisation’s willingness to provide technical assistance for teacher development but insisted that any support must complement Nigeria’s own 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.”
Alausa reaffirmed the government’s commitment to providing domestic funding while working with development partners to ensure the effective implementation and long-term sustainability of its education reforms.