Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH) has now been officially upgraded to Lagos State University of Science and Technology.

Governor of Lgaos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, approved the bills passed by the House of Assembly converting LASPOTECH to Lagos State University of Science and Technology, while Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOD) and Michael Otedola College of Primary Education (MOCOPED) were merged to become Lagos State University of Education.

LASPOTECH Rector, Dr Oluremi Olaleye expressed appreciation to the governor for the upgrade and also thanked House of Assembly Speaker Mudashiru Obasa and the Chairman, House Committee on Education, Owolabi Ajayi, for their foresight and resoluteness in ensuring the passage of the bill.

The Mozambican Ministry of Education has threatened to hold criminally accountable any public school managers who prevent children from attending classes because their parents have not yet paid the supplementary fees some schools charge to pay for security guards.

Addressing a Maputo press conference, the ministry’s spokesperson, Gina Guibunda, said while there is nothing illegal about schools collecting money from parents to pay for security guards, such payments are entirely voluntary, and under no circumstances should they prevent children from attending classes.

The issue of parents’ financial support for schools, Guibunda added, has been enshrined in the law since a ministerial diploma of 2004.

The amount raised from parents should be used to improve school conditions and parents cannot be forced to pay it.

She said that schools should only start collecting the voluntary fees from March, after the School Councils, which are liaison bodies between school managements and parents to address matters of common concern, have been renewed or set up.

Guibunda also admitted that the recently reported corruption scandal at the Education Service in the southern province of Inhambane, where episodes such as the sale of false certificates, the rigging of examination marks, and charging as much as 50,000 meticais (about 780 US dollars) for entry into the Teachers Training Centre (IFP) are commonplace.

The spokesperson told reporters that investigations are under way to find the truth, but the ministry is aware of the fraud and as soon as the probe is completed those involved will be dealt with accordingly.

Ahead of the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination, UTME, and Direct Entry registration billed to commence on February 12, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board, JAMB, has hinted on its plan to establish self-service registration platform.

JAMB explained that the new registration platform would only be established in Lagos and Abuja.

The Board added that it was set to incur not less than N50 million as added commission to its financial vendors, following the introduction of the cashless regime in the 2022/23 UTME/DE Registration exercise.

Head of Media and Protocol, Fabian Benjamin, in the board’s weekly bulletin, said the new registration measure was aimed at expanding the registration access points in line with health protocols and reduce the crowds at CBT centers in affected cities.

Benjamin, who noted that JAMB would incur over N50m as commission to financial vendors, quoted the registrar, Prof. Ishaq Oloyede, as explaining that the additional financial burden was the price the Board was prepared to pay, due to its passionate concern for the plight of UTME/DE candidates by fraudulent centre owners.

Officials in New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, California and Oregon said on Monday they will lift indoor mask mandates for schools and other public places in the coming weeks.

The officials sought a return to normalcy as soaring COVID-19 infections fueled by the Omicron variant abate.

The changes signal a growing inclination by political leaders in those states, all led by Democrats, to take pandemic-weary residents off an emergency footing and shift toward policies that treat the virus as part of everyday life.

Four of the states announcing action on Monday also set hard deadlines for ending mask mandates in schools.

Republican leaders in some states, including Florida and Texas, have banned mask mandates in schools, while Democrats have generally encouraged the policy to help stall new infections.

In New Jersey, where the number of new cases has decreased over the past two weeks, Governor Phil Murphy announced the state would lift its school mask mandate on March 7.

“Balancing public health with getting back to some semblance of normalcy is not easy. But we can responsibly take this step due to declining COVID numbers and growth in vaccinations,” Murphy wrote on Twitter.

Connecticut Governor, Ned Lamont said his state would lift its mask mandate on Feb. 28, and Delaware’s John Carney announced the state’s school mask mandate would end on March 31.

President Joe Biden met Murphy and the other U.S. governors last week at the White House, where the state leaders expressed a desire to return to a sense of normalcy nearly two years after the pandemic forced many schools to switch to online learning and later to institute mask policies.

Dr. Leana Wen, a public health professor at George Washington University and Baltimore’s former health commissioner, said lifting mask mandates was the right step.

It marks a needed shift from the government-imposed requirement to individual decision. It helps to preserve public health authority for when it’s needed again,” she added.

As masking policies shift, many school districts have returned to in-person learning in recent weeks, according to Burbio.com, a site that collects school calendar data.