The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has lamented the large number of teachers in private schools who are not qualified to teach in Nigeria.
Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, the registrar of the Council, stated this in Abuja on Thursday at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Council and INSTILL Education, a South Africa-based education organisation.
The TRCN Registrar said that unqualified persons in the teaching profession are not teachers, but cheaters, adding that they don’t only cheat the pupils and students but the system in its entirety.
Ajiboye revealed that contrary to several speculations about the South-West and its teachers of private schools, 70 per cent have been discovered not qualified.
Lamenting that 70 per cent of the unqualified teachers lack the requisites to be registered by the Council, the TRCN boss stated that a large number of teachers in Nigeria have never been exposed to formal training and have been using out-dated equipments for illustration.
“A large number of teachers in private schools in Nigeria today are not qualified. We wanted to use a consultant to get revenue from teachers in private schools. When we carried out a survey, we observed that a reasonable amount of 70% of teachers in the South-West are not qualified as well.
“They are not registrable with the TRCN. So that is to tell you that there is a big gap. So you cannot call them teachers but cheaters. You know that there’s a difference between teachers and cheaters. If you are not a teachers, you must be a cheater.
“These people do not possess the requisite qualification to register them and so there’s a big gap. So we are looking into the future to fill up that gap like it’s done in South Africa,” he said.
He said signing of the MoU marked a milestone in the proposed collaboration between INSTILL Education and TRCN which was aimed at equipping Nigerian teachers with 21st Century skills that will ultimately support teacher’s professional development and learning outcomes in Nigeria and Africa in general.
