Charlatans must leave our classrooms this year —TRCN registrar

What has been your experience in the last three years as the registrar of the TRCN? 

I was appointed the chief executive of TRCN on 1st August, 2016, and was inaugurated on the 2nd of August by the then Minister of Education, Mallam Adamu Adamu. I came with a clear mandate of implementing the TRCN Charter, the law establishing the council, making sure that TRCN is revolutionalised. The first thing I checked was the website of TRCN and I discovered that the website was down. How can an organisation that has been existing since 2004 have its website down and not be maintained? What we did first of all was to attack the issue of Information and Communication Technology in TRCN. We made sure that we were able to put TRCN back on the website. We made sure that all our activities are integrated and well run on ICT.

We also created Teacher Information System, whereby those teachers who have registered with TRCN now have their names displayed for Nigerians to have access to them. The state offices are run on ICT basis and our paper-based activities have been reduced maximally.

Another major achievement of the council was the introduction of Professional Qualifying Examination. It is one thing that this current government has been able to achieve as regards teacher professionalism. We came up with the idea and submitted proposal to the Honourable Minister of Education then, Mallam Adamu Adamu, and he approved immediately that we should implement the Professional Qualifying Examination. Today, Professional Qualifying Examination is a major feature in TRCN activities. This is what is done in other professions. Before you can register as a Chartered Accountant, you must pass ICAN (professional examination). We felt the same way that before you can be registered as a professional teacher, you must be able to pass the professional qualifying examination and it is really working for us very well.

How many teachers have been registered so far in your database?

The TRCN, since establishment, has registered close to two million teachers. There are also so many others coming up (to register) because there is the deadline of December 31st, 2019 for anyone who wants to teach in this country to be qualified, registered and licensed by TRCN. That deadline has been given by the National Council on Education (NCE) and it has been communicated accordingly to all the states of the federation for implementation. Because of that deadline, majority of those who want to teach or those who are already teaching and know they have not registered are coming for our Professional Qualifying Examination.

With this last Professional Qualifying Examination, the May diet, we had about 30,000 applicants that took the examination, and for the October diet, I know the number may likely be doubled because Nigeria has more than three million teachers.

What happens to those who may not meet this deadline?

Well, the law is there. If you are not a registered teacher, that means you are a quack; you are a cheater, and you are not supposed to be in our classroom. We are going to start enforcement from January 2020. And like I have always said, the enforcement may likely start with the private schools because for public schools, we have about 83 per cent compliance of teachers. In private schools, they are not yet responding very well and that is why the enforcement may likely commence with the private schools.

Teacher quality is one critical challenge in the educational system in Nigeria. Beyond this registration and certification, what is TRCN doing to address the challenge of poor quality of teachers?

We also engage in what is called Mandatory Continuous Professional Development (MCPD) programmes for our teachers. The National Teachers Institute is actually established to take care of training programmes for in-service and pre-service teachers. That is their mandate, but we also support the NTI in doing that. Very recently, we started what is called the digital literacy programmes for Nigerian teachers. We want to believe that this government, as they put in their manifestoes for the NEXT Level, will focus on digital literacy training programme for teachers by supporting TRCN in focusing on this.

What number of teachers is required for Nigeria to have adequate teachers in the classroom?

We have a deficit of teachers in our schools; and not only in Nigeria, in sub-Sahara Africa, we have a deficit of about seven million teachers. With the number of schools and population of Nigeria, it’s natural that we are going to have the biggest shortage of teachers in our schools. Some people are saying that we require recruitment of 250,000 teachers annually to be able to meet the needs. When you go to some states of the federation, the last time they recruited teachers into their system is about 10 years, while so many of these teachers are retiring daily.

This is one of the reasons the Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT), Federal Ministry of Education and TRCN are trying to push a bill through the National Assembly to increase the retirement age of teachers from 60 to 65, and the number of years in service from 35 to 40, so that we will be able to retain these experienced teachers.

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Are you not disturbed as a regulator that teachers are owed several months unpaid salaries in some states? What role are you playing in this?

Apart from teacher professionalism, one area that concerns us very much is teachers’ welfare. Teacher professionalism and teacher welfare are like two faces of a coin. A hungry teacher cannot go to the classroom and teach. You need to pay teachers well. Some of those countries we call developed countries are developed because their education system is working. What makes their education system work are their teachers. If you want your education system to be strong, you have to have quality education, and you need quality teachers. That is why we will continue to say that teachers’ welfare should be paramount and governments at all levels should take that very seriously. Look at some of the developed countries, Germany for example; teachers earn the highest salary in Germany. In Finland and Singapore, teachers are highly rated. Go to Japan and other countries where their education system is working and students’ achievement is very high. The secret is that those countries are taking care of their teachers very well.

Would you advocate curriculum review in order to address the challenge of poor quality of teachers being churned out from the teacher training institutions?

The curriculum of teacher training institutions is not within the purview of the TRCN, but what I can report to Nigerians is that as at now, the National Commission for Colleges of Education that is in charge of regulating colleges of education in Nigeria is carrying out a massive review of the NCE curriculum. They are doing that in all disciplines in the NCE, and TRCN is part and parcel of the review. In fact, they have just adopted the Professional Standard for Nigerian Teachers and included it as one of the courses for teachers at the NCE level, which is good. If teachers are taken through the professional standard while they are in training, I believe strongly that it will enhance their capacity. I believe very strongly that with the review that is ongoing, it will translate into a new set of teachers to be produced that would be 21st century-compliant.

Beyond professionalism, what does a registered teacher stand to gain?

The first thing is that you are a professional teacher. You cannot belong to any other profession without being registered to practise. If you want to practise as a lawyer, will you not register? So, number one, you belong to a profession. Two, there are training programmes. We organise training programmes for our teachers, and even if you find yourself outside Nigeria and you want to practise as a teacher, what you just need to do is to approach the teaching council in that country, they will contact us and we will issue a letter of professional standing, which gives international recognition as a teacher in that particular country where you are. There are a lot of benefits that are attached to it.