Mr Raji Oladimeji, the Oyo State Chairman, Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), has urged the government to address the myriads of problems in public schools so as to achieve quality education.
Oladimeji stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Ibadan on Tuesday.
He said the shortage of teachers in public schools has been affecting the quality of education and the problem was not limited to Oyo State only, it is a nationwide challenge.
According to him, although the Oyo state government in 2021 employed 5,000 teachers in secondary schools, it is still not enough, adding that the problem was more pronounced in primary schools than in secondary schools.
“Also, some teachers from Primary Schools were also seconded to secondary schools; and that in a way should take care of the secondary school teachers’ gap.
“His excellency has promised that there would be mass recruitment of teachers for Primary schools in the first quarter of 2024, this is one of the problems affecting the quality of education,” Oladimeji said.
He stated that besides the shortage of teachers, insecurity was another problem inhibiting quality education as interventions provided by old students’ associations, parents’ teachers’ associations, churches and non-governmental organisations in terms of equipment were being carted away by hoodlums.
Oladimeji said hoodlums daily go into schools after closing to steal educational materials, equipment and other infrastructure provided to schools by well-meaning people.
According to him, even statutory records were being taken away by perpetrators and the absence of these records would affect students and pupils in the future.
The NUT chairman, however, called for improving security in public schools as it would address a lot of issues facing qualitative teaching and learning in schools.
“Some of our schools lack illumination and where we have illumination, wires are being removed, fans and other things and this is affecting the technological equipment being supplied to schools such as generators, computers and internet.
“If we do not have a power supply or generator, how do we work with some of these technological materials that could be useful for teaching and learning in our schools?
“And another thing which is not also limited to Oyo State, is the shortage of instructional materials in some of our schools. Apart from this, we need to expose our teachers to modern-day technology because of pedagogical experiences so that they will be able to approach some of these things,” Oladimeji said.
He said the lack of real remuneration for teachers has always been a setback to quality education in Nigeria.
According to him, some teachers are collecting remuneration in percentages which would serve as discouragement for some teachers
