By Mike Adeyemi
At least 75 per cent of teachers in Kwara public schools resumed in the first week in compliance with the 2018/19 academic calendar.
The Chairman, Kwara State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB), Alhaji Abdulkareem Lambe, made this known on Friday in his office while speaking with our reporter.
Lambe, who led the monitoring inspection committee to schools said, “the board had expected that teachers would not comply with the official resumption date due to the recent protest by some of them who alleged non payment of their salary arrears by the state government.
“It is our normal routine practise that whenever schools resume, it is the responsibility of SUBEB to move round the 16 local government areas of the state to monitor the compliance of teachers, that has been our practise.
“I particularly led the team on this assessment to ascertain the level of compliance and what we observed was encouraging to some extent as 75 per cent of school heads and teachers adhere strictly to the resumption date.
“The few school heads and teachers that were absent will face punishment except for those credited to be on study and maternity leaves,” he said.
On the recent protest by teachers in the state, the Chairman noted that the Kwara State Government is working assiduously towards clearing those salary arrears.
“For you to know that the Kwara State Government is proactive about the welfare of its workers, the government in February sourced N4 billion to pay outstanding arrears of the workers in the state.”
The SUBEB boss however berated the teachers for not channelling their grievances through the right medium.
“If they have grievances, I think they ought to have channelled it through the umbrella body of teachers, which is the NUT. Their protest is unethical,” Lambe stated.
Speaking further, Lambe urged the Quality Assurance Bureau under the Ministry of Education and Human Capital Development to ensure that conditions for setting up private schools are met before issuing certificate to proprietors, saying the springing up of mushroom schools is affecting the quality of education in the state.
“Ideally, there shouldn’t be two schools within a circuit range of an environment, the opposite is what we have today,” he stated.
