Effective Teacher Management in Crisis Contexts: Lessons Learned from the Kaduna State Teacher Recruitment, Deployment, and Retention Policy to improve education outcomes in Northeast Nigeria

Although basic education is officially free and compulsory in Nigeria, an estimated 19.7 million children and youth are out of school, most of whom are in northern Nigeria. Even when they are enrolled and attend classes, students are not learning the required foundational skills and often receive poor quality instruction due to limited resources, poor school infrastructure and teacher shortages. Attendance rates and learning outcomes in northern Nigerian states are among the poorest in the country, driven by various factors including protracted conflict, economic hardship, and sociocultural norms that discourage attendance in Western education, especially for girls. Furthermore, deliberate attacks on local education systems by armed insurgents in Northeast Nigeria since the late 2000s have led to the death, abduction and displacement of students and teachers, widespread school closures and psychological harm to children.

Teachers are critical to improving the quality of teaching and learning in Nigerian schools. However, like many education systems in remote, low-resource and conflict-affected settings, Nigeria faces challenges in identifying and retaining competent teachers and adequately staffing schools. Recent studies conducted as part of education projects funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) found that few teachers had sufficient levels of professional knowledge and skills to be effective in their classrooms, even when they had the minimum teaching qualifications. Low pay, poor supervision and limited opportunities for professional development and career progression also contribute to low teacher motivation, high absenteeism and attrition.

To address these challenges with teacher supply, competency and management, the Kaduna State government developed and adopted a teacher recruitment, deployment and retention policy in 2019, drawing on rigorous evidence and policy recommendations generated by an FCDO-funded research study in the state. Drawing on the Kaduna State policy, in 2022 Adamawa State (another crisis-affected state in Northeast Nigeria) developed similar legislation to address their teacher management challenges. Credible evidence on the effectiveness, impact and adaptability of existing policies is important for policy transfer and adaptation in similar contexts. However, there is limited evidence to date on the degree to which the Kaduna State policy guidelines were implemented, their impact on the number and quality of available teachers, and the successes or limitations of the implementation process.

This policy brief outlines the extent to which the 2019 Kaduna State Teacher Recruitment, Deployment and Retention Policy has been implemented as intended. It highlights the factors that enabled or hindered the implementation process and provides recommendations for policymakers seeking to improve teacher management processes in Northeast Nigeria and other conflict-affected settings. This brief draws on the findings of an ERICC research study, which assessed the implementation of the 2019 Kaduna State policy to determine its adaptability to new conflict and crisis settings in Northeast Nigeria. The findings are based on data collected by Oxford Policy Management in 2023 through surveys, key informant interviews and focus group discussions with policy implementers, headteachers, teachers and school-based management committees in Kaduna State. It contributes credible evidence on the effectiveness of policy implementation, which is important for continuous improvement within states, and policy adaptation in other contexts in the region.