Teaching Service Commission Reels Out Achievements In 4 Years

Mrs. Olubusola Abidakun, Permanent Secretary of Teaching Service Commission (TESCOM), stated this at a media parley held recently at the Commission’s Head Office, Old Secretariat, Ikeja.

She said, “The Commission had trained over 6,381 in the year 2020, over 12,760 in 2021 and over 15,699 in the year 2022. We are equally committed to continuously improving the professional and management skills of 17000 teachers in public secondary schools across the state in 2023”.

According to Abidakun, immediately after the inauguration of TESCOM in February 2019, the first resolve was to address the acute shortage of teachers in the State’s Post Primary Schools through the recruitment of academically and professionally qualified teachers into competency frameworks in terms of the generic, technical and attitudinal soft and hard skills that make the teachers worth their pay.

Her words, “Our first resolve was to address the acute shortage of teachers in the state’s post-primary schools through the technical and workforce planning strategy by recruiting over 7,143 Teachers to boost the manpower need in our post-primary schools”.

“These newly recruited educators were adequately inducted or on-boarded to ensure proper immersion into the school system. The Commission was also granted approval for the Quarterly Replacement of Exited Teachers in the six education districts”, she said.

The Permanent Secretary averred that the Commission also observed that the much-touted professionalisation of the teaching profession was not reflected in the promotions of the teachers in the state. The Commission, therefore, redesigned the Structured Training Programmes (STP) for teachers to include professional job-specific training programmes.

Speaking further, she explained that during the COVID-19 outbreak, which resulted in the lockdown of all schools in Nigeria and the World at large, the Commission commenced the Eko Webinar Series, a virtual platform solely for post-primary school teachers’ enhancement and productivity during and post-COVID era.

Abidakun also revealed that the annual Verification Exercise for Pensioners was redesigned to allow the “senior citizens” to get verified from the comfort of their homes, thereby reducing all the risks involved in physically presenting selves at the Commission. Dedicated WhatsApp lines were introduced for online verification and about 9,874 pensioners on the old pensions scheme have been verified through video calls to date.