The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) on Thursday pledged to end the use of unqualified teachers in private schools.
Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, TRCN Registrar, said this on the sidelines of a Media Round Table on Restoration of Teachers Dignity in Abuja.
He said that the council’s would continue its mandate of ensuring the use of qualified teachers in both the public and private schools in the country.
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“The private schools now know that it is not going to be business as usual, we have already told them.
“We have a pool of teachers that are qualified that are not yet employed that have left the NCE and universities and we have told them go and employ those ones.
“The era of using school certificate holders as your teachers is gone and we want the gentlemen of the press to join us in telling them this.
“That the era of using unqualified teachers in their schools is gone because as from next year TRCN will begin monitoring and we are not going to spare any school, both public and private .
“We are going to get some consultants to join us because we know we have a large number of private schools in Nigeria and when we are talking of unqualified teachers, the large number are found in private schools.
“So, if their teachers are not yet qualified there are so many programmes they can quickly go and enrol for: Post Graduate Diploma in Education, Professional Diploma in Education, to get themselves qualified.
“From next year, we are going to send unqualified teachers away from the classroom.’’
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He said the council would start the enforcement of its relevant laws as from next years.
The Registrar, however, said the aim of government was not to sack anyone from his job.
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“At a time, they said TRCN is going to sack people. We are not saying government should sack anybody because we know there is unemployment everywhere.
“What TRCN is saying is that, there are mandatory periods within which you must get qualified and if you fail to do so, we are not the one that will send you out but you are the one sending yourself out of the teaching profession.
“You will not see a person that is not a lawyer standing before the judge in the court. The same thing you will not see in the theatre someone who is not a qualified medical doctor.
“If we as teachers are the ones that produce all those ones, we will not allow again anybody that is not a qualified teacher to stand in front of our children to teach them.’’