[{"bbox": [96, 152, 1135, 206], "category": "Text", "text": "and particularly its thematic area of engagement 1) Promoting economic and social rights recognizing education as a key policy area to accelerate progress towards gender equality in EU external action."}, {"bbox": [96, 216, 1135, 351], "category": "Text", "text": "The Action aligns significantly to the Global Gateway, especially to its *Education and Research and Digital* Pillars as well as the green and digital agendas. By promoting inclusive and equitable quality education the Action will not only benefit to young girls and other vulnerable groups but participate in the transformation of education and reliable access through digital tools, without discrimination, with specific sensitisation activities directed at teachers and school management."}, {"bbox": [96, 361, 1135, 418], "category": "Text", "text": "The project will work with Federal and State government in Nigeria to improve the quality of 100,000 teachers and achieve better learning outcomes for over one million students annually."}, {"bbox": [85, 443, 342, 474], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## 2.2 Problem Analysis"}, {"bbox": [96, 488, 1135, 570], "category": "Text", "text": "The objective of the action is to address a number of teaching specific problems which have affected the quality of the education sector in Nigeria through the implementation of national policies and continuous professional development of teachers. In that regard, the issues are:"}, {"bbox": [96, 580, 1135, 928], "category": "Text", "text": "1. A weak management of the education system and its impact on teachers, their careers and working context resulting in teacher attrition. A *National Teachers' Policy (2014) and a Policy on Career Path for the Teaching Profession* (2019) exist, that provide recruitment and deployment policies and career pathways for teachers, among others. However, the guidelines on their implementation are yet to gain grounds across the target States, resulting in inadequate and inequitable teacher supply. With teacher shortages, classrooms become overcrowded, teachers overworked and demotivated, and the quality of teaching decreases. Especially affected are the most vulnerable children and those in rural and hard to reach areas. Nationally, teaching is not an attractive career choice; for many it is an option of last resort. With low pay, low social status, poor working environment and difficult living conditions in remote locations, it fails to attract high calibre entrants, who themselves need initial capacity development which is not readily provided by the system. Deployment to schools remains inefficient with weak links to enrolment, resulting in widely varying Pupil to Teacher Ratios (PTR). This project will work with national and State governments to review and strengthen the implementation of the existing policies to ensure efficient management of teachers for effective class room delivery."}, {"bbox": [96, 938, 1135, 1312], "category": "Text", "text": "2. Poor service delivery and the poor quality of teaching in schools and classrooms. Indeed, a significant number of teachers are not able to deliver quality education for a number of reasons ranging from training to structural issues, curricular, infrastructural limitations and low morale. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programmes fail to adequately prepare them to current classroom realities of large classes and pupils at wildly varying learning levels. There is an over emphasis on subject content over pedagogy combined with poor management and supervision of practical teaching. This results in students in the system not receiving the kind of education that would prepare them to a competitive 21st century that demands innovation, creativity, critical thinking skills, and digital skills, adaptable and transferable skills. The global challenges presented by climate change, loss of biodiversity and environmental degradation, require behavior change, new knowledge and skills. This puts education at the heart of both short and long term solutions – to mitigate impact, improve resilience and adaptation, while changing patterns of consumption and greening economies. Associated with this is the problem of school leadership, with job descriptions focusing more on administration and management than on instructional leadership. Subsequent opportunities for professional development tend to be ad hoc and not always linked to the priority of enabling learning."}, {"bbox": [96, 1321, 1135, 1537], "category": "Text", "text": "Linked to this is the need for increased use of digital technology in teachers' education. This offers potential to support both the initial training and continuous professional development of teachers. Teachers' access to ICT is rapidly growing and there are some interesting innovations in using technology to reach teachers and improve their digital skills and digital literacy. The impact of Covid 19 and the need for school continuity during pandemics has helped bring this to the fore. This action will seek to support government's action in its 'Learn at Home Programme' embedded in its overarching Strategy in partnership with some educational technology companies to provide virtual learning platforms including radio broadcasts and links to e-learning resources.⁵ It will also provide approaches at ensuring greater capacity for continuous development of teachers through development of expanded"}, {"bbox": [85, 1620, 800, 1647], "category": "Footnote", "text": "⁵ COVID-19: FG launches free e-learning portals for students (premiumtimesng.com)"}, {"bbox": [1037, 1680, 1144, 1705], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 5 of 20"}]