The Registrar of Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Professor Josiah Ajiboye has disclosed that about 70 per cent of teachers in private schools in the South West are not qualified to teach children in classrooms in the country.
Ajiboye made this known on Thursday in Abuja at the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Council and INSTILL Education on capacity building for teachers in Nigeria.
He noted that a pilot phase of implementation of the MoU would soon commence with a capacity building for eight weeks.
Ajiboye said the MoU has three major components- pre-service teachers, integrating pre-service with in-service teachers and their capacity-building programmes while expressing confidence that the involvement to instil education would bridge the gap between pre-service and in-service teachers.
“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.
Lamenting that 70 per cent of the unqualified teachers lack the prerequisites to be registered by the Council, the TRCN boss stated that a large number of teachers in Nigeria have never been exposed to training and have been using outdated equipment for illustration.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% 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 teacher, you must be a cheater.
“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, upskilling them,” he said.
On his part, the Dean of Operation at Instill Education, Mr Tom Parry, said the training received through his organisation will always end with a practical applicable component so that teachers have an opportunity to practice and understand.
