The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) said on Tuesday in Kaduna that it would not support the sacking of unqualified teachers.
Prof. Josiah Ajiboye, its Registrar and Chief Executive Officer, announced the council’s position while interfacing with newsmen shortly after meeting with education stakeholders in the North-West.
“TRCN does not support the disengagement of unqualified teachers; what the council wants from the states are opportunities for unqualified teachers to be trained and retrained.
“We want to seek understanding with state governments to make sure that unqualified teachers undergo training to become qualified teachers; we want to entrench professionalism.
“Such alliance with state governments will enable us ensure that only qualified and competent teachers teach in the country. This is because no nation can rise above the quality of its teachers,” he said.
He said that Kano State had set a good example by training 8,000 unqualified teachers.
“The state plans to train 19,000 more teachers in 2018,” he said.
Ajiboye explained that the meeting with chairmen of State Universal Basic Education Boards and other relevant stakeholders focused on the mandate, activities and achievement of TRCN, and areas of collaboration.
He said that the meeting provided an avenue for the stakeholders to suggest ways of addressing challenges affecting the teaching profession in Nigeria.
“We also examined areas of partnership with state governments on teachers training and retraining so as to boost the quality of education,” he said.
The registrar said that the TRCN was the only body empowered to register, monitor and regulate the teaching profession in Nigeria, saying that it had so far registered and certified 1.8 million teachers.
TRCN Coordinator in Kaduna State, Malam Kabir Yar’adua, in a remark, said that the council was working closely with the state government and the Nigerian Union of Teachers to promote professionalism.
He commended the state government for making TRCN certificate a requirement in its planned recruitment of 25,000 primary school teachers.
Malam Idris Aliyu, a Deputy Director in the Kaduna State Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, dismissed reports that there were plans to sack unqualified teachers in the state.
“The state government is only trying to bring sanity and professionalism into the teaching profession by removing those that have no business being in the classroom.
“Those found unqualified will be redeployed to other agencies and establishments where they will fit in,” he said.