Yusuf Oketola
NO fewer than 47 public school teachers in the State of Osun are currently battling and undergoing rehabilitation for different types of mental health challenges in the state.
This was disclosed by the state Commissioner for Education, Hon. Folorunso Oladoyin, while addressing a press conference on Monday, September 19,2022.
According to Oladoyin, instead of sacking the affected teachers, the state decided to help them seek rehabilitation.
He disclosed that the government has also discovered that surrogate teachers exist in public schools in the state, just as some teachers are also suffering from different health challenges.
He also disclosed that the Ministry of Education has eliminated examination malpractices in public schools across the state.
The commissioner said: “We also discovered that 47 active teachers at various schools were suffering from different mental health challenges. Rather than disengaging them, we place them on rehabilitation programme after which two have resumed their duty post.
“We are also tackling the problem of quack teachers, especially deployment of National Youth Service Corps members as main teachers, as well as N-Power teachers, to ensure that our students get quality service delivery, hence, recruitment of 2500 teachers to deliver on our vision.
“We have also discovered great truancy among teachers in the state. During one of the supervision exercise, we discovered that some teachers were no longer leaving in the state but earning salaries.
“A teacher has relocated abroad for over two years, yet drawing salary on monthly basis. Another is practicing legal profession only to schedule student to come for lessons on weekends.
“We also discovered that a female teacher has relocated to Ogun State and only come around weekends to take classes while another one has been employed as lecturer at a Federal University, but engaged a surrogate teacher and paying him N10,000.”
Oladoyin stated that the ministry has eliminated exam malpractice in all the public schools in the state.
He said contrary to previous years when 266 public secondary schools were caught to be involve in examination malpractices by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) officials out of the 308 that presented candidates for the exams, only one public secondary school was caught in the same act in 2019.
The commissioner said that is a great success in the bid to tackle examination malpractices and enhance quality education in the state.
