LAGOS State government on Monday said it had recruited a total of 7, 143 teachers into both its junior and senior secondary schools across the six education districts in the state in the last four years.
It also claimed that it had promoted a total of 18,374 teachers across cadres at the same post primary school level within the period under review.
The permanent secretary of the state’s Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM), Mrs Olubusola Abidakun, gave the revelation at a news conference held at TESCOM office, old secretariat in Ikeja, GRA.
She noted that since TESCOM was inaugurated in 2019, it had been recruiting new teachers on yearly basis into the public post primary schools, both in the urban and remote communities and had equally been promoting teachers across cadres as well as training and retraining them.
She said the essence of injecting new teachers into the state teaching service and also engaging in periodic promotion and training of the deserving ones was to ensure optimal performance and production of total students who can compete globally.
She explained that both the recruitment and promotion exercises were based strictly on competency and merit, and not on political or ethnic affiliations.
“And that is why we have people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds as teachers and non-teaching staff in our public schools.
“Their commitments to duties have shown in the students’ excellent performance in the external examinations and school competitions at the national and global levels, as they have also been winning laurels including the National Teachers of the year Awards,” she stressed.
Mrs Abidakun said that though teachers were being recruited based on the needs assessment of schools subjects in the aspect of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) the subjects have higher chances in securing appointment based their on needs.
While noting that TESCOM has trained up to 34,840 teachers to sharpen their skills and knowledge in service delivery between 2020 and 2022, the commission targets to train up to 17, 000 this year.
She said the commission is not also taking the issue of retired teachers with levity as their pensions are not only being paid promptly but up to date.
According to her, every pensioner under the TESCOM in the state has collected their zpension up to date.
“If there is any, such a person will have documentation problems which will be resolved in no time,” she added.
The perm sec, however, said the achievements recorded by the commission were not of individuals but collective efforts and that the commission would not rest on its oars rather strive harder to take the teaching profession in the state public schools to higher level.
