• Council threatens to name and shame unqualified teachers
The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has threatened to expose unqualified teachers operating in various schools across the country as part of efforts to rid the profession of quacks.
TRCN Registrar, Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, said the council would soon embark on what he called ‘naming and shaming’ to expose unqualified teachers, especially in private schools.
Ajiboye explained that the council has been addressing the issue of unqualified teachers in both public and private schools and the exercise has been yielding positive results.
“A large percentage of teachers in public schools, about 80 per cent are qualified but the same cannot be said of private schools where we have less than 50 per cent of qualified teachers. We’re resuming the monitoring of schools across the country very soon with what we call ‘naming and shaming’ of private schools,” he said.
Ajiboye said the council is collaborating with the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools (NAPPS) to ensure that the teachers they employ are qualified.
He lamented the idea of recruiting secondary school leavers as teachers, saying this affects the quality of teaching and the education system.
The TRCN chief said it was not right to measure teachers’ quality with an examination such as the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME), which is a one-shot test. He explained that it was abnormal for private schools to be collecting money from parents without rendering consummate services.
“You cannot be collecting heavy money from parents and not be using the right calibre of teachers,” he noted.
However, Ajiboye enjoined parents to always visit the TRCN website to know the status of teachers in the school where their children are, as teachers’ profiles have become a prerequisite for registering schools with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
On his part, President of the Institute for Governance and Economic Transformation, Kingsley Moghalu, emphasised the need for the country’s education system to put skill development at its centre.
He pointed out that learning must go beyond the routine memorisation of facts to helping learners acquire various forms of skills that make them form a formidable human capital for national development.
He said: “Educated citizens must be skilled to be able to create individual livelihoods, community wealth, and national value chains and thus, effectively contribute to the economic transformation and global competitiveness of the nation, especially in light of the fourth industrial revolution.”
Citing the World Bank and United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) reports, Moghalu said about 20 percent of teachers in public basic education institutions in the country lack the necessary qualifications.
A lecturer at the Federal University, Otuoke, Stanley Boroh, attributed the decline in teachers’ quality to poor remuneration, which has made the profession unattractive to qualified personnel.
Boroh maintained that the government should train and retrain teachers, and also provide an enabling environment for them to work.
