Abia govt to develop attractive reward system for teachers

Abia State Government says it is developing a more attractive reward system for teachers in its public school as part of an initiative to incentivise the present crop of teachers and attract others, who can add value to the system by the reason of their training and temperament.

Governor Alex Otti, stated this in a speech entitled “Immortal influence of teachers”, which he delivered at the 2024 World Teachers’ Day, held Saturday, October 5, 2024 at the Abia Teachers House in Umuahia.

Recall that about 1,200 primary school teachers across the State were recently retrained to update their skills and prepare them for the reforms that the State Government is introducing into the public school system.

Another batch of teachers from secondary schools will be trained in November, 2024.

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The governor also announced that his administration had made substantial progress on the schools remodelling projects happening in all the Local Government Areas of the State.

He said that his target was to ensure that at least one hundred retrofitted school buildings would be ready for use ahead of 2025 school session.

“As you are aware, we are not just building blocks of classrooms, we are creating an ecosystem that supports teaching and learning, increases the curiosity of pupils and students and then offer spaces where they can read and find answers to their academic and moral questions”, he noted.

He said that the State Government was aware of the disturbing trend of vandalism of public property, including schools, by unscrupulous individuals, noting that the Homeland Security Office is deploying security personnel to the most vulnerable schools, to curtail the menace of criminals, who vandalise public buildings for private gains, or reasons of rascality.

“We have also directed the traditional rulers and community leaders to be actively involved in securing public property in the domains. The State Government takes matters of security very seriously and will go the extra mile to protect our pupils, students, teachers and learning structures in rural and urban communities.

“Our dream is to make the public school system in the State the best in the country in the areas of teacher quality, learning environment, safety, and quality of pupils and students. We have benchmarked ourselves against the best and shall not rest until our pupils and students are able to compete with their peers from other parts of the world.

“This for us is a lifetime journey and we shall strive to reach our destination because the world has become a very competitive space where only those who have equipped their people to compete can thrive”, he added.