Lagos State Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo, has said public schools teachers need to be retrained in order to pass on knowledge efficiently.
Mrs. Folasade Adefisayo, in an interview with our correspondent, said one of the major challenges in government schools was poor learning outcomes, adding that learners were not being engaged effectively.
Adefisayo added that the coronavirus lockdown helped to reveal this need as much gap was created.
“We have to do a lot of work by training our teachers and engaging them on new practices in teaching methods. What affected us most of all I think was the way we educate children. The reason we have poor learning outcome is the quality of teaching.
The way we teach shows that we are not engaging the learners sufficiently; the private bodies are doing much better. It is not because the children are clever, but it is because they have more resources and the teachers have a better way of engaging them; the teachers are from the same colleges of education, the same university, faculty, so why can’t we have such in our schools?” she said.
Adefisayo also lamented that the coronavirus pandemic slowed down the innovative policies her ministry would have embarked upon.
She explained that the ministry planned to repair and build new sets of schools but the lockdown hindered the plan.
“The coronavirus lockdown slowed us down a little bit because we have decided that we would do certain things in the area of infrastructure, we would build certain number of schools, and we were hoping that by the first year we would open new schools which had not happened for many years in the state, but the pandemic slowed us down.”
“Again, it made us move faster into integrating technology into teaching and learning,” she said.
Meanwhile, the Lagos State Ministry of Education in partnership with Chronicles Software Development Company will give out free SuccessBOX on West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examination and Basic Education Certificate Examination to allow SS3 and JSS3 pupils prepare for examinations.
According to Adefisayo, the initiative was designed to enable students to revise extensively and prepare for their WASSCE and BECE examinations which were expected to start August 17, 2020.