Mr Oladoyin Folorunso, the Commissioner for Education in Osun State, has revealed that 47 teachers from various public schools in the state are undergoing rehabilitation.
He also revealed that the state’s Ministry of Education has eradicated examination malpractice in public schools across the state.
Responding to questions from journalists at the Ministry in Osogbo on Monday, he said his team discovered that, in addition to surrogate teachers in public schools, some teachers are also suffering from various health challenges while on supervision across the state.
“We also discovered that 47 active teachers at various schools were dealing with various mental health issues.” Rather than disengaging them, we placed them on a rehabilitation program, and two of them have since returned to their duties.
“We are also addressing the issue of quack teachers, particularly the deployment of National Youth Service Corps members as main teachers as well as N-Power teachers to ensure that our students receive quality service delivery,” he said.
In contrast to previous years, when 266 public secondary schools were found to be involved in examination malpractices by the West African Examination Council, WAEC, officials out of the 308 that presented candidates for the exams in 2019 were found to be involved in examination malpractices.
According to him, only one public secondary school was caught in the same act in 2019, which is a huge success in the state’s effort to combat examination malpractice and improve education quality.
“We have also discovered widespread truancy among state teachers.” We discovered that some teachers were no longer leaving the state but were earning salaries during one of the supervision exercises. A teacher has been living in another country for over two years while receiving a monthly salary. Another option is to practice law and only schedule students for lessons on weekends.
“We also discovered that a female teacher has relocated to Ogun state and only comes around on weekends to take classes,” he added. “We also discovered that another female teacher has been employed as a lecturer at a federal university, but has engaged a surrogate teacher and is paying him N10,000.”
