TRCN to storm classrooms from January over unqualified teachers

The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) says it is fully ready to begin the enforcement of ban on unqualified teachers from classrooms in January 2020.

Registrar/Chief Executive of TRCN, Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, who made this known in Abuja on Friday, said the move has become necessary to sanitise the nation’s teaching profession as the registration window for all teachers to get certified by the Council will elapse on 31 December, 2019.

“We will start monitoring for compliance from January. The aim is not to sack anybody but to sanitise the education system and remove quackery. It will stop the teaching profession from becoming an all-comer affair.

“We also want to enhance professionalism while ensuring that every child get quality education; the era of using the teaching job as a political patronage for just everyone is over,” he said.

Speaking on the number of teachers that are qualified to teach in Nigeria, the TRCN boss said the Council has registered over two million since inception.

“We now have over two million registered, qualified and certified teachers. The qualifying examination is to ensure that we have a data bank to serve as a gatekeeper to weed out those who should not be in the classroom,” he said.

Prof. Ajiboye said that the TRCN is considering the idea of conducting the qualifying exam four times in a year to give ample opportunity to would-be teachers.

The Registrar said that the council had successfully built a Teachers Career Path policy to remove teachers from the normal scheme of service to a special scheme that would improve their welfare and working conditions.