Tension as Oyetola’s commissioner says 47 public school teachers suffer mental health issues in Osun

Osun state commissioner for education, Oladoyin Folorunso, has disclosed that 47 teachers across various public schools in the state with mental health problems are undergoing a rehabilitation programme.

Telescope.ng reports that he also disclosed that the ministry of education in the state has eliminated examination malpractices in public schools across the state.

Fielding questions from newsmen at the ministry in Osogbo on Monday, September 16, he said his team, while on supervision across the state, discovered that apart from surrogate teachers existing in public schools, some teachers also suffer from different health challenges.

He stated: “We also discovered that 47 active teachers at various schools were suffering from different mental health challenges. Rather than disengaging them, we place them on a rehabilitation programme, after which two have resumed their duty post.

“We are also tackling the problem of quack teachers, especially deployment of National Youth Service corps members as main teachers as well as N-Power teachers to ensure that our students get quality service delivery, hence, recruitment of 2500 teachers to deliver on our vision.”

Folorunso added that contrary to previous years when 266 public secondary schools were caught being involved in examination malpractices by the West African Examination Council, WAEC, officials out of the 308 that presented candidates for the exams in 2019.

According to him, only one public secondary school was caught in the same act in 2019, which is a great success in the bid to tackle examination malpractices and enhance quality education in the state.

He said: “We have also discovered great truancy among teachers in the state. During one of the supervision exercises, we discovered that some teachers were no longer living in the state but earning salaries. A teacher has relocated abroad for over two years, yet drawing salary on monthly basis. Another is practising the legal profession only to schedule students to come for lessons on weekends.

“We also discovered that a female teacher has relocated to Ogun state and only come around weekends to take classes while another one has been employed as lecturer at a federal university, but engaged a surrogate teacher and paying him N10,000.”