For quality teaching in the nations basic education, the Federal Government has revealed that starting from next year, 2021, only candidates with first class and second class upper will be considered for teaching employment.

It said migrating teachers without foundation in education will be required to sit for conversion programmes in order to learn pedagogy and the other ways of communicating and managing students.

The Permanent Secretary to the Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echonu, who disclosed this, Saturday in Abuja, during the professional qualifying examinations for teachers which was organised by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), said better remuneration has been concluded towards upgrading the level of teachers.

He added that already, a national implementation committee will be inaugurated next week to cover all the teachers registration and revitalisation plan and one of which is the issue of entry.

According to him:

With effect from next year we will not admit or engage people as teachers if they don’t meet a particular threshold. We are now limiting entry to only the best, you must have a first class or a 2/1 as minimum.

If you have qualification in other subjects that is not in education, we arrange for a conversion programme to be administered by NTI, TRCN and any university that has faculties of education that has this programme because you have to learn pedagogy and the other ways of communicating and managing students.

We are migrating teachers who are not qualified or do not have the requisite qualifications, competency or not licensed or registered to practice we are migrating them out of our classrooms to make way for qualified personnel because we want to achieve learning and teaching and learning occurs in our schools.

The examination itself is going very smoothly, the feedback we get is very good. We will continue to do this and we encourage others to get in touch with NTI, TRCN.

We are finalising the figures with national salaries and wages commission and in talks with unions, views of state government, private school owners so that we can all work together and decide on when implementation will take off.

On his part, the Executive Secretary of TRCN, Prof. Ajiboye, while stressing the importance of the qualifying exams, said questions have been placed online for candidate’s in the diaspora who cannot have permits to teach without the the certificates.

He said the Council has begun registration for the next diet which is come up around February or March 2021 and the figures are rising as a result of knowledge about its importance.

He said:

We are not perturbed. We have promised Nigerians we will have the examination minimum of twice in a year that’s why we have to go ahead. We have begun registration for the next diet which is going to come up around February or March next year and the figure we are getting is rising. The pandemic had largely caused this.

There are Nigerians in diaspora and before they can get any teaching position where ever they are, they must show evidence they are professional teachers and that they are registered with their teaching regulatory authority before they leave the country.

To provide that evidence you need to write our exams because we cannot issue you the letter of professional standing without sitting for TRCN examination and so we have placed the examination online for Nigerians in the diaspora and the response has been very huge. We have Nigerians cutting across countries of the world now writing the examinations.

Its very seamless, we have the opportunity if monitoring them where ever they are writing the exams because the laptop they have must have a webcam to allow us monitor them.

He added that the Council is

very glad a Nigerian teacher is on the list of ten best global teachers vying for the global teachers prize. We are highly enthused a Nigerian had made it for the first time. He needs our support and we want him to win that prize because he is doing very well.

Justin Nwosu

Justin Nwosu is the founder and publisher of Flavision. His core interest is in writing unbiased news about Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. He’s a strong adherent of investigative journalism, with a bent on exposing corruption, abuse of power and societal ills.