Over 45,000 teachers qualify for Professional license in October

Over 45,000 teachers who sat for the October Diet of the Teachers’ Professional Qualifying Examination (PQE) have qualified to register for teaching licenses.

The Registrar, Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria, (TRCN) Professor Josiah Ajiboye made this known in Abuja while speaking to Journalists on the recently concluded October diet Qualifying examinations of the council.

The examination, which was conducted in 47 centers across the country, started on the 11th of October in states with high number of candidates and ended on the 12th of October.

Ajiboye further hinted that the results had been approved by the Governing Council of TRCN, explaining that only 62,895 out of 66,354 teachers that registered participated in the examination.

According to the TRCN Registrar, "the result was not bad because the average performance of those who passed the examination is 72.03 per cent, which is 45,301 candidates, while 27.97 per cent which is 17,594 candidates failed"

“Going by the states performances, the teachers from Lagos State recorded 88.19 per cent followed by Enugu State with 85.76 per cent and Kano State with 84.69 per cent" he added.

“The performances of the candidates from other states are also very encouraging and the Federal Ministry of Education and TRCN Governing Board are happy with it,” Prof Ajiboye also said.

He stressed that even when the PQE was not an achievement test, it was important to ensure that an individual registered as a professional teacher.

He emphasised that the council would not issue teaching certificate and license to any teacher without writing the examination.

“We are now preparing for November/December diet of PQE, for the council to meet up with the deadline of Dec. 31.

“We are organising this Batch C to meet up the requests from many teachers who wish to meet the December deadline and the registration of the candidate will end by Nov. 8.

“The conduct of the November/December PQE is schedule for Dec. 6 and Dec. 7. Those who failed Oct. diet have the opportunity to re-enroll and re-write the examination with the new set.

“Those who also passed should go ahead to register at the centre close to them to be able to get their certificates and licences as qualified teachers,” he said.

Ajiboye gave assurance that TRCN would not back down on its position to flush out unregistered or unqualified teachers out of the education system by Dec. 31.

“It is not only TRCN’s position but the position of National Council on Education that has to be implemented. We will make sure we enforce the law and by January 2020, we will begin to move around for enforcement,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria and the NYSC have agreed on modality for posting corps members to schools

The TRCN Registrar said that TRCN recently held meeting with NYSC Director-General and they agreed on the modality to be put in place in the interim that will mitigate the situation and end posting of non-education degree holders to schools.

According to him, TRCN is not totally against posting of corps members in school because the council is aware that there are corps members who read education.

“Our understanding with NYSC Director-General is to make those corps members, who read education to be the first to be posted to schools.

“There are some other things we could put in place to mitigate the situation pending the time that we will be able to get the required numbers of teachers in our school system in the country.

 “It is a continuous discussion to mitigate the situation for those inadequacies in place of those corps members that are not educational base,’’ he said.

The registrar noted that there were challenges of having qualified teachers in some states of the federation.

According to him, with the numbers of teachers needed in some states, we cannot stop NYSC from posting corps members to schools because it may likely cause problem in such states.

“We are looking at it from the direction that we will be able to mitigate for those inadequacy. Though, the corps members are auxiliary teachers but we need them to fill the vacuum for now.

 Professor Ajiboye adds that they are being referred to as auxiliary because teaching is not their jobs or profession but they are just using it as National Services.