TRCN, college lament slow educational development, poor teacher’s quality

Provost urges implementation of tribunal
The Registrar of Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Prof. Josiah Olusegun Ajiboye, has raised the alarm over the slow pace of development in the country’s education system.Consequently, Provost of Adeyemi College of Education (ACE), Ondo, Prof. Olukoya Ogen, said erring teachers should be jailed.

They spoke during World Teachers Day celebration yesterday. Ajiboye, who spoke on “The teacher as a professional in time perspective,” expressed the need for quality education for them.

Ajiboye, who was the guest lecturer, noted that the theme was apt and complementary to that of National Council on Education for the year. He said: “The theme of this lecture is apt and timely, taking into consideration President Muhammadu Buhari administration’s resolve to bring an everlasting reform in the education sector, which is essentially pivoted on teacher quality and quest for professionalism.”

He lamented that Nigeria and Finland, whose educational attainment was very low in the early 1960s, have the same education policy but the former still suffers deficiency in teacher quality.

According to him: “Nigeria and Finland are operating similar system of education and yet our education system cannot match that of Finland despite the well-articulated policies.

“What lesson can we learn from the history of Finland that will help reform our system and to restore the lost glory of Nigerian teachers? Nigeria has no reason whatsoever to be left behind because we have everything it takes to develop our education system.”

He said that teachers are catalysts for Finland’s achievements, which made her to lead the international community in literacy and other laudable feats in science and mathematics.

“Nations are as great as their teachers. This is well captured in the national policy on education, which inter-alia ‘No education system can rise above the quality of its teachers,” he said.

This, he said, led the council and several other educational bodies to improve on the welfare of teachers.“Nigerian teachers can only improve if the dignity and prestige they had in the past is restored,” he asserted.

Ogen, who stated that behaviour that puts the teaching profession into disrepute among academic members of staff in the college would no longer be condoned. He urged them to “sit up and do away with insincerity of purpose to fully embrace best practices to truly belong to the team that could fulfil the mandate of our profession.”

This, he said, would help to build the youths and make them responsive to values, which will bear positively on the nation.He, therefore, tasked TRCN on the “Teachers Tribunal so that unworthy and unscrupulous elements among teachers could be weeded out and where necessary sent to jail for their misdemeanor.”