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| Mrs Folasade Adefisayo, Lagos State Commissioner for Education |
Mrs Folasade Adefisayo, Lagos State
Commissioner for Education, disclosed this while speaking at the News Agency of
Nigeria (NAN) Forum on Friday in Lagos.
The commissioner said that 1,036 schools
benefitted from the projects in 20 local government areas of the state.
“We’ve worked in 1,449 projects and these
include; school buildings, renovations, provision of furniture, labs and
equipment.
“And the idea behind this projects is to
make schools across the state look good and to further create enabling environment
for conducive learning both for the students and teachers,” she said.
Adefisayo noted that building of schools
“is an ongoing thing; we just opened the Elemoro school with track and field in
Ibeju Lekki and we are not relaxing because there are still more to be done.”
Adefisayo said that at present, the state
has no fewer than 16,000 teachers and that approval has been given by the state
government to always replace retired teachers in secondary schools,
particularly in key subjects.
“Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu on assumption of
office gave approval to recruit and replace retired teachers at every level, so
as they keep retiring, we also keep replacing,” she explained.
The commissioner said Sanwo-Olu had
presented 12 cars to outstanding teachers to reward excellence in the state
teaching service.
She added that over 15,000 teachers across
the state had been trained through Eko Excel for improved capacity to deliver
quality education to the students.
NAN reports that Eko Excel (Excellence in
Child Education and Leaning) is an education reform programme poised to develop
more highly skilled teachers.
It includes training, supporting and
motivating existing teachers in government schools to boost their ability in
helping children learn in positive environment.
The commissioner identified negligence and
helicopter parenting by some parents as contributory factors to prevalence of
cultism and bullying among students.
Adefisayo said that helicopter parenting
had made some students not to be strong to withstand some activities
around them, while negligence parenting
had made some students become cultists.
According to her, curbing cultism and
bullying among students will not just be by preaching and talking to them
alone, but through multi-dimensional approaches.
“Good teaching also helps because when the
students are engaged in school, sometimes they don’t want any trouble.
“One thing we have looked at again is to
expand the academic curriculum, so that there is something for everybody,” she
said.
Adefisayo said that there was the need to
find the dichotomy between just the Biology of having children and the
spiritual part of raising children.
She said that the state government was also
addressing the spiritual part by making
Islamic Religious Knowledge and Christian Religious Knowledge compulsory in
junior schools.
The commissioner said that the state
government was building sports centres around the state, which would help to
engage students and keep them away from cultism and bullying. (NAN)