The Minister of State for Education, Anthony Anwukah on Monday said the Federal Government has received the report of a probe panel set up to investigate alleged sexual molestation of a Junior Secondary Two (JSII) pupil at Queen’s College, Yaba, Mainland, Lagos.Recall the government had last month constituted a five-man panel to probe the sexual molestation allegation against a teacher, Mr Olaseni Oshifala. Anwukah, who confirmed the receipt of the report in an interview to reporters in Abuja on Monday, said: “I set up a committee as soon as that thing came up and the committee has been working and they have met their time frame. This is the report. The ministry will now look at the report and in the next couple of days be able take a final action on it.The report by the committee I set was given to me this morning.”
Speaking on the quality of teachers, the minister further said, “We are not doing badly but we are not there yet where the developed nations are. A few problems may be responsible for our not been at par with the rest of the world. Understanding, yes they have developed structures that have enabled them move on. We are evolving a stable system. We are not yet evolved a stable system. For instance, our teacher education is not yet where it should be and I have been singing it as a song since I accepted this responsibility that we must have quality teachers in our school system.We must have teachers who are trained to be teachers. The education system in terms of teachers is almost populated by more than 50 per cent of people who are not trained to be teachers through to teach in our schools. You must develop the art of teaching. You must be trained with the appropriate skills in teaching in other to become a teacher in our system and this runs from our primary school to the university system”.
