The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has disclosed that henceforth, only teachers who are certified and licensed will be allowed to practice the profession.

Nigeria To Stop Uncertified Teachers From Classroom As From May 31

These were the remarks of the registrar of the Council, Josiah Ajiboye, while addressing newsmen on Saturday, at one of the centres of the maiden edition of Teachers’ Professional Qualifying Exams for over 20,000 potential teachers across the 36 States of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

He said: “Teaching is the mother of all professions, if we get teaching right we will get it right in all sectors of the economy. No country can rise beyond the quality of its education and no education can rise above the quality of it teachers.”

The registrar said the exam would hold twice yearly, precisely in May and October.

Speaking on the result, Ajiboye said the results of the Saturday exams would be out within the next one week.

“In total we have 20,000 potential teachers who wrote this exam today. In Kano we have about 1,500; In Plateau state we have 1,600; In FCT we have over 430 individuals who sat for the exams,” the registrar said.

Also speaking, while monitoring the examinations organised by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria, the Minister of Education, Adamu Adamu, said that the examination was part of efforts of the Federal government towards professionalising the teaching profession.

The minister who was represented by the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, Sunny Echono, said the exams were intended to assess Nigerian teachers and to certify individuals who succeed as qualified teachers.

Ajiboye had in May revealed that all unqualified teachers would not be allowed into the classrooms by the end of 2017.

“The teachers Registration Council of Nigeria has come out with a policy decision which is backed and supported by the Federal Ministry of Education.
“The ministry has approved that the regular registration without qualifying examination should stop by the 31st of May 2017 and the first professional qualifying examination will take place in October 2017.
“We are going to stop just normal registration of qualified teachers without examination by the end of this month. “We have done advertisement in Nigeria newspapers and have sensitised teachers to this that definitely by the end of this month we will stop normal registration.
“Any teacher who is qualified who now wants to register as a professional teacher in Nigeria will have to take professional qualifying examination.
“For teachers who are not qualified the government policy is that we will no longer allow unqualified teachers to be in our classrooms at the end of 2017. “These teachers have been given enough time to go remediate for this lack of qualification by taking professional diploma in education or post graduate diploma in education as the case maybe.
“Those teachers that are not qualified poses a great danger to the Nigerian educational system and because of that we want to wipe off all quacks and the act of quackery from teaching in Nigeria.
“So any teacher that is not qualified will no longer be found in Nigerian classrooms from 2018.”