Edo To Employ 1,000 English, Maths Teachers

Edo State Government has concluded plans to employ and train 1,000 young graduates to teach English and mathematics teachers in secondary schools across the 18 local government areas of the state.
The Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Joan Osa Ovaiwe, who disclosed this at a press conference in Benin City, Edo state, said the essence was to enhance the standard of learning in the state.
Ovaiwe also disclosed that the ministry was setting up in-class libraries in classrooms to improve model digital learning across the state. She said the libraries would be used to entice students to use libraries and learn how to manage books.
She said, “To ensure that students are prepared to meet performance expectations in a constantly changing workplace and remain relevant, we have re-imagined academic activities.
“This ensures that 60 percent of the activities are for teaching, learning, and instructional time; 24 percent are for co-curricular activities; and 16 percent are for brain stimulating activities for students, effectively covering all three domains of learning (Psychomotor, Affective and Cognitive).
“We have designed a school calendar that ensures that students learn for at least 400 hours/450 class periods each term. We have made it easier to set up in-class libraries in all of the state’s classrooms, with the goal of enticing students to use the libraries more and learn how to manage books.
“This is for 18,052 Basic Classrooms, 46 Special Education, 3,835 Secondary Classrooms and 61 TVET classrooms, across the State. To make sure students are well prepared for the new school year, parents and teachers would be provided with Back-to-School List
“There is going to be model Digital Learning across the state, commencing with 40 pilot schools in partnership with UNICEF. And to introduce competency-based learning to students, which will help them develop useful and practical skills while the students learn.”
She posited that in order for them to build on the gains already seen in the Basic Education Sector Transformation ( EdoBEST) Program, the State Government through the Ministry of Education has been compelled to take decisive action under the EdoBEST 2.0 reform agenda to address concerns with secondary education.
“We are going to create standard operating procedures for diverse school clubs to make sure their operations don’t impede, but rather enhance students’ learning results. We are going to create studios for creative and performing arts in some state schools to help students better understand the new multimedia trend.
“Sports such as athletics, ball games and callisthenic exercise will be introduced and students will be encouraged to grow trees, do school greening and landscaping to instill an environmental sustainability mentality in them,” she said.
The commissioner said the whole essence was to equip students on model e-learning through Information Communication Technology (ICT) and to make them compete with other students across the globe.
She said government is already addressing questions raised about the deplorable state of infrastructure in some public schools across the state.
The Chairman of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Edo State, Comrade Festus Alenkhe, thanked the commissioner for making herself available to the media and promised that the media would give necessary publicity to stories from the ministry.