Date: 2017-03-17

Kwara state has improved school monitoring strategy with a view to evaluating teacher effectiveness and students performance.

A source at the state ministry of education said the intention was to place students, their needs, experiences and achievements at the heart of monitoring and improvement.

He said the main purpose of monitoring and evaluation was to create a basis for self assessment leading to self-improvement of teachers. The source said before now, teacher absenteeism was prominent both in rural and urban schools due to non-payment of salaries and allowances for a long period.

The source said teachers' attitude towards their career changed from the last quarter of 2016 after the state Ministry for Education began monitoring and verification exercise for teachers in both public secondary and primary schools.

Speaking to Daily Trust on the monitoring exercise, the state Commissioner for Education, Engineer Musa A. Yeketi, said the essence of the exercise was to change anomalies in the education sector of the state.

"The improved monitoring of school is aimed at bridging the gaps between the private and the public schools. You will see that the owners of private schools always monitor and check activities in and around the school from time to time.

"It is the responsibility of the Ministry of Education, Teaching Service Commission and State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to monitor the schools within the state to make sure that the teachers are doing the job for which they are paid for and make sure that they are doing it correctly. This is one way we are going to improve the standard of education in the state. "Monitoring of our schools was lacking before which was why the standard of education went down and now that we are doing it, the public have confidence in public schools," the commissioner said.

The ministry's monitoring exercise, according to the commissioner, has yielded positive results because apart from improving the productivity of teachers, it has also enabled government to ascertain some of the challenges facing schools in the state.

"We were able to discover those (teachers) who do not go to work, those who have absconded, those who are dead, and those who have retired but their names are still on the payroll.

"The monitoring will therefore help us get a new list of staff; both in Teaching Service Commission and in SUBEB and when we are done with the whole exercise, the new list of staff would be forwarded to the two bodies," Yeketi said.

He said the monitoring exercises in which teachers and schools were inspected by ministry officials ensured quality teaching in addition to fishing out the phony employees. He said the names of those found wanting would be forwarded to Teaching Service Commission and SUBEB for necessary disciplinary action at the end of the whole exercise.

"We have completed that of Kwara Central, we are now moving to other senatorial districts of the state for the same purpose and it would finish before the end of next term," he said.

On the infrastructural decay in some of the schools, the commissioner said government had earmarked funds for the renovation of 420 classrooms.

"The state government would employ more teachers after discovering that some schools lack teachers in some key and non-key subjects," he said, adding that there are huge numbers of teachers in some schools while others were grappling with insufficient teachers. He said teachers will be redistributed from urban to rural schools.

A visit to some of the schools where employee verification exercise had been conducted revealed that teacher absenteeism had reduced after payment of 75 per cent of salaries owed teachers between January and February this year.

"When they came to our schools, they spoke to all of us and that yielded positive result in terms of punctuality and attendance of teachers, coupled with the payment of January and February salaries but nothing has been done on infrastructure.

"We have been asked to list all our challenges such as lack of enough teachers, chairs and desks, working materials etc, which we hope would be attended to soon," one principal said.

The principal said Parents Teachers Associations and school management committees have consistently responded promptly to the demands of many schools.