Lagos to remunerate teachers based on performance – Fashola

The Governor of Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN) has said the state government had determined to start remunerating teachers in its schools from primary to secondary level according to their competence and performances. He said this was to encourage healthy rivalry among teaching staff and in turn the development of education in the state.

Fashola stated this in his address at the recent annual Breakfast Meeting he had with the sponsors and donors of various projects and activities in the government-owned schools within the last one year. The meeting, held at the City Hall on Lagos Island also featured award ceremony for the strong supporters of the Support-A-School initiative of the state.

The governor said the era of getting unmerited reward by government workers in the state had gone.

Lagos State, according to him, is now looking into rewarding professionalism among its teaching staff. “The state will now be accepting additional professional qualifications acquired by any teacher on a part–time basis as well as evaluating performances with special focus on their knowledge of information and communication technology,”he stressed.

While encouraging teachers to go out of their ways to acquire more skills that would help them on their jobs and other areas of life, Fashola said every teacher’s focus should be to produce well-rounded students.

He noted that because his administration gave so much value to capacity building of teachers, it had spent nothing less than N500 million to train 12,000 and 21,000 teaching staff in public primary and secondary schools in the state between 2010 and 2013 alone.

While appealing also to corporate organisations and philanthropic individuals to assist the state in the training of its teachers, he commended private sponsors who he described as partnersin- progress for their continued supports and commitment in this regard as well as the education sector in general.

Speaking earlier, the Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye while commending the partners also appealed to them to continue to support the state, saying government cannot do it all alone