Nigeria has resolved to engage qualified and licenced teacher as part
of efforts to rid the system of unqualified teachers.
Mr Sonny Echono, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education, said
while monitoring the May Diet of the Teachers Professional Qualifying
Examination (PQE) organised by the Teachers Registration Council of
Nigeria (TRCN) in Abuja on Saturday.
“We are dead serious about implementing the policy and we are also
working very hard to ensure that we also are ready.
“The first thing that is going to happen is that TRCN and NTI are
compiling a database of qualified teachers, those that have been
certified, those who have taken this examination who are unemployed.
“And we are going to do it and even segregate them state by state and
make them available to each state.’’
He said the it was going to be the starting point, that anybody who
has been certified as a teacher should be employed because we have no
excuse for that.
“We have a huge dearth of qualified teachers, so all those that we
have should be engaged to work, and all those who are not qualified we
are sorry, we have to move them out of the system.
“Yes there may be some issues relating to the number, that is why we
want to ramp up the production process, we are taking so many measure.
“And enforcement is very key; we have taken two steps towards ensuring
enforcement. We have upgraded what we call quality assurance
department. It used to be called inspectorate, we now have state
offices in all the states of the federation.’’
The second step, said was re-establish the secondary education
commission. It has just been approved by Mr President to come on board
and we are working out the modalities for how they will operate.
“What they will be doing, apart from mobilising additional resources
to that segment of our education sector, they will be enforcing
standards.
“Indeed we are looking at even the possibility of collapsing our
quality control and inspectorate division with the commission to
ensure we effectively monitor together with our colleagues in the
state.
“To ensure whether you are in the private sector, whether it is
government, community or faith based school we will enforce this
policy to the fullest’’
Echono reiterated that the deadline for flushing unqualified teachers
from the classrooms remained Dec. 31, adding that additional diets of
the PQE may be conducted in order for teachers to meet up with the
deadline.
The Permanent secretary commended TRCN for the smooth and simplified
process of the examination describing it as being up to international
standards.
“As you can see, it is all electronic, there is no huge crowd or
delays; you come in, do your biometrics and when you log in your
picture is displayed. So there is no issue of anyone sitting on your
behalf.’’
30,000 teachers wrote the examination in 50 centres nationwide.
