The worrying preponderance of unqualified teachers in ‘some private schools,’ as lately observed by Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, registrar of Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), but indeed in Nigerian schools generally, is unacceptable. It endangers the education and the future of Nigerian children; it must be firmly discouraged.
In what seems a sweeping statement of the ‘problem’, the registrar reportedly said ‘it is a truism that some private school owners promote this quackery in teaching because they want to maximise profit. They could just employ anyone and unleash them on our children.’ Ajiboye’s claim is supported by Haruna Danjuma, president of National Parents-Teachers Association of Nigeria (NAPTAN) who added that there are some schools that cannot be so called because the proprietors ‘just rent a room and a parlour in a house and they have started a school.’ ‘In most of the schools at stages one and two, you hardly can find a trained teacher working in those private schools because [they] cannot afford to engage trained teachers…’. This is unacceptable and the relevant authorities must rise to the challenge to protect Nigerian children from this existential threat to their future in a highly competitive world.
Abayomi Odubela, president of National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools disagrees with the TRCN boss, saying that he may be referring to ‘illegal schools.’ Odubela insists that in the case of ‘approved private schools that are operating with approvals, over 90 per cent of those teachers are professionals and certified.’
The argument can go hither or thither ad infinitum but the core of it is that every stakeholder in the education sector, starting with government at every level, must take a keen interest in the quality of the teachers who educate our children. It is a truism that no one gives what he does not have. To that extent, the quality of the teacher is critical to the quality of knowledge and skill he imparts; the teacher, as the human resource, is arguably the driving force of education.
Private schools, it must be conceded, are set up as profit-making businesses. But they cannot be allowed to put profit motive so much above all other things as to jeopardise the future of Nigerian children. No. They must find a balance between private interest and public interest. And this is where the government must come in first, as a regulator.
It is a constitutional injunction in section 18 that ‘Government shall direct its policy towards ensuring there are equal and adequate educational opportunities at all levels [for all citizens]’. Within the context of its primary duty for the ‘welfare’ of the people, it is the duty of the government through its agencies, to assure quality of personnel and material resources in the education sector. This is to protect directly, children, and indirectly the parents and society, from ‘quackery’ in the teaching profession.
TRCN has a six-point federal mandate that includes ‘determining who is a teacher’; ‘determining what standards of knowledge and skill are to be attained by persons seeking to be registered as teachers…’; and ‘regulating and controlling the teaching profession in all its aspects and ramifications’. To these ends, the agency has a wide range of powers to, among other things, register and license qualified teachers.
Furthermore, it is to execute ‘Mandatory Continuing Professional Education (MCPE) to guarantee that teachers keep abreast of developments in the theory and practice of the profession’; ‘organise Annual Conference of Registered Teachers…’ ; ‘Publish a register of qualified and licensed teacher in Nigeria which will be a public document displayed and obtainable from the Local Government through State to the Federal offices’; ‘enforce ethical conduct among teachers and actually prosecute erring ones using the Teachers Tribunal which has powers under law to met out punishments’; ‘prosecute in the law court all unqualified persons performing the job of teachers in contravention of the TRCN Act.’
If the agency finds a ‘contravention of the TRCN Act’, what has it been doing about it? Ajiboye says his organisation is encouraging teachers to first qualify in the appropriate tertiary institutions and then register for certification with TRCN. The organisation has also ‘embarked on enlightenment campaigns among private school teachers to promote professionalism…’ ostensibly with the admonition ‘seek first professionalism and every other desirable will be added unto you.’ Furthermore, the registrar urges other tiers of government to ensure that schools are approved conditional upon their teachers being qualified, registered, and licensed by his agency.
In principle, this is the most desirable way to go except that it is hardly practicable at this time. Are there enough people genuinely interested in the teaching profession to pick and choose from? No, because in this clime, the profession is neither well remunerated nor respected as it should. Besides, its practitioners are not well motivated. The teaching profession is certainly not the most attractive in this environment because it suffers a ‘residual contempt’ that derives from a holistic disdain for education by successive governments – unlike development-focused authorities elsewhere. A case in point is that the 2023 Federal budget for the education sector is a paltry N1.8 trillion or 8.8 per cent. This is a far cry from the 15 -20 per cent recommended by UNESCO or better still, 4-6 per cent of annual GDP which in 2022 was estimated at $1.085 trillion according to worldeconomics.com. The point must also not be lost that, in this country of high unemployment, not a few are into teaching only for the want of a preferred job.
The problem of unqualified teachers in the schools is a perennial one. In 2014, the then governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole had a running battle with the issue of teachers ‘whose suitability in a classroom has not been ascertained’ in both public and private schools.’ He reportedly sacked 836 of them. Nonetheless, Oshiomhole’s effort to enforce a ‘competency test’ on them was fiercely resisted by the state chapter of the National Union of Teachers (NUT); it termed the step ‘vindictive’. Similarly, in 2018, the governor of Kaduna State, Nasir el-Rufai sacked 22,000 unqualified teachers who, having been granted a five-year period since 2012 to acquire ‘the requisite skills and qualifications to teach,’ still failed to do so.
Daniel Ighakpe, in a recent Op-ed, offered suggestions toward solving the problem of unqualified teachers in schools. He wants persons with a passion for teaching but are uncertified by TRCN to be allowed to keep their jobs while they pursue certification; ‘administering competence-based tests for these supposedly unqualified teachers regardless of the educational qualifications they …possess’. Also, ‘teachers [should] be provided with adequate training and development opportunities … that will expose them to…improved methods of performing their duties…’ The popular view that the quality of education in Nigeria is falling has much to do with the quality of the teachers.
All said, it needs to be said directly that private schools mushroom because the government, as constituted authority with all the powers and resources available to it, fails miserably to make public schools fit and proper places of study. The governments in Nigeria fail so miserably to fulfill even the commitment clearly stated in Section 10 of the National Policy on Education.
The yawning gap in the quality of education is inevitably filled by entrepreneurs. It is somewhat hypocritical, therefore, that a duty-derelict government complains against profit motivated proprietors cutting corners. A determined government can give the private schools a run for their money in terms of quality of education in their respective schools. Rwanda under President Paul Kagame proves that this is do-able. It was reported that the quality of education in the public schools in that country has so much improved that parents withdrew their children from the private schools, some of which have closed down; while others are threatened by low patronage, even as enrollment in public schools rises.
The regulation of the education sector falls under the Concurrent List in the extant Constitution. The Federal Government is hereby directly and strongly enjoined to learn from Rwanda. President Bola Tinubu promises in his Action Plan for a Better Nigeria manifesto to ‘reform the education sector by focusing on the following indices: quality, access, funding, management, effectiveness, and competitiveness’ with a view to achieve three objectives. Even as he gets on with this, the state and local governments must not wait for the central authority before they show some exceptional thinking and action. All tiers of government should, nay must, do the needful for the sake of Nigerian children, and of the country.
