by Oge Okonkwo

A massive falsification of age of primary school teachers in Edo state public schools has been revealed in an audit carried out by the state’s  government.

Governor of Edo state, Adams Oshiomhole, said that the audit was executed by the state’s Information and Communications Technology in which the results showed that  789 out of 1,379 teachers obtained their Primary School Leaving Certificates before the age of eight or nine.

This was revealed during a town hall meeting held on the state of education where he also said that according to the records, it showed that some people were particularly gifted to have finished primary school before they were born.

He further stated that based on the records only 1,287 representing nine percent out of 14,484 primary school teachers had accurate and proper records while the remaining 91 percent had different forms of irregularities in their records.

Vanguard reports:

“About 1,379 teachers representing 11.5 percent claim that they obtained their primary school certificates after they had been employed as teachers.  In fact, some obtained their Primary School Certificates not more than two years ago, from the school in which they were employed as teachers.

“The question then is whether they went to Teachers’ Training College or obtained National Certificate of Education, NCE, before they went to primary school.

These are facts that have been well documented. It will not be helpful to the cause of education and our resolve to deliver quality education to our pupils if we do not deal with these issues decisively.”

The governor who reeled out statistics on the teacher-student ratio in all the local government areas of the state, said that the average of 30 students per teacher in the state was much lower than the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, UNESCO recommendation on student-teacher ratio.