Over 70% of private school teachers in South-West lack credentials – TRCN

The Teachers Registration Council, Nigeria’s regulating organization for the teaching profession, asserted on Thursday that more than 70% of private school teachers in the South-west states lack credentials.

Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo, and Ekiti are among the south-western states.

Professor Josiah Ajiboye, the TRCN’s registrar, claims that the teachers are unqualified as they lack the credentials necessary to register with the council.

Speaking on Thursday in Abuja at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the council and Instill Education, a South African educational organization, to upgrade in-service teachers’ skills in Nigeria.

Ajiboye said a pilot phase of execution of the MoU will shortly start with capacity building for eight weeks. He signed the document in Abuja with his management team.

Pre-service teachers, integrating pre-service and in-service teachers, and their capacity-building programs are the three main components of the MoU, according to Ajiboye, who expressed optimism that Instill Education’s cooperation will close the gap between pre-service and in-service teachers.

He said, “With regards to our teachers, if you look at what we have said here today, three major components actually were identified: the pre-service teachers, even integrating pre-service with the in-service.

“We have looked at pre-service teachers, the in-service teachers and their training programmes and we have been able to see that there is a gap,” he said.

The head of the TRCN bemoaned the fact that many of the teachers working in private schools in Nigeria today are not even qualified to be called teachers, noting that a survey conducted by the council revealed that more than 70% of the teachers working in private schools in the Southwest are unqualified and ineligible for registration with the TRCN.

“So, these people are not registerable with TRCN because they don’t possess the requisite qualification that will allow us to register them. There’s a big gap there.

“Instill may be looking in the future on how to fill that gap. Like they are doing in South Africa; they may also, but the major component of this MoU is about the in-service teachers. How do we go about capacitating these in-service teachers, and upskilling them?

“And that’s what Instill is coming with; they are upcoming with their expertise and technology to be able to help us to do this kind of capacitation for our teachers. 

“We’ve been talking over time, about mandatory continuing professional development for teachers, where teachers are going to take certain capacity development programmes and they will get points and this will count towards the renewal of their licence as well as their promotion,” he added.

(PUNCH NG)