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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has said 70 per cent of private school teachers in the South West are unqualified.
Registrar of the Council, Josiah Ajiboye, disclosed this in Abuja during the signing of a MoU between TRCN and Instill Education, a professional development institute for teachers, on Thursday.
He said, contrary to several speculations about the South West and its high-standard private school teachers, 70 per cent have been discovered not to have the required qualifications.
Ajiboye said unqualified persons in the teaching profession are not only cheating the students, but also the system.
He said the unqualified teachers lack the requirements to be registered by the TRCN, adding that a large number of teachers in Nigeria have never been exposed to training and have been using outdated equipment for illustration.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 per cent of teachers in the South West are not qualified as well.
“They are not registrable with the TRCN. 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 teacher, 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.
Ajboye said the council has registered over 2.3 million teachers in its database.
He said TRCN has developed the policy called professional standards for Nigerian teachers (PSNT).
The TRCN Registrar noted that it was domesticated by Sierra Leone and adopted by the Africa Union (AU) for implementation in Africa.