By FUNMILAYO ADEYEMI

Seventy per cent of private schools teachers in the Southwest are unqualified.

The declaration was made in Abuja on Thursday by the Registrar, Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Prof. Josiah Ajiboye.

“When we conducted our survey, we observed that 70 per cent of teachers in the Southwest are not qualified.

“A large number of teachers in private schools in Nigeria today are also not qualified,’’ Ajiboye said.

He spoke at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the TRCN and INSTILL Education, a South Africa-based educational organisation.

“Unqualified teachers are not only cheating pupils and students; they are cheating the education system in its entirety.

“They are not registered with the TRCN because the unqualified teachers lack the prerequisites to be registered by the council.

“That is to tell you there is a big gap, hence they cannot be called teachers, but cheaters,” he stressed.

Ajiboye said also that the number of unqualified teachers in the Southwest showed a contradiction to several speculations about private school teachers.

He added that a large number of teachers in Nigeria had never been exposed to training and had been using out-dated equipment for illustrations.

“There is a difference between teachers and cheaters. If you are not a teacher, you must be a cheater,” he quipped.

The registrar said also that the signing of the MoU marked a milestone in the proposed collaboration between INSTILL Education and TRCN to equip Nigerian teachers with 21^st century skills.

He explained that the MoU would help teachers to develop professionally, and enhance learning outcomes in Nigeria and Africa in general.

Ajiboye noted that the TRCN had registered more than 2.3 million teachers in its data base.

He added that it had developed Policy on Career Path for the profession and Professional Standards for Nigerian Teachers (PSNT).

The PSNT, he said, had been domesticated by Sierra Leone and adopted by the African Union for implementation across Africa.

“The major component of the MoU is to retrain in-service teachers and enhance their capacities and skills.

“A large number of the teachers have never been exposed to a single training programme since they were employed, thereby making them doing the same thing the same way.

“The teachers need to be exposed to new ways of doing things and that’s what INSTILL is coming with.

“They are experts in new technologies and will help in the areas of capacitation for our teachers,” he stressed.

Ajiboye reiterated TRCN’s commitment to deliver on any joint and desirable programme initiated by both parties for Nigerian teachers.

The TRCN had been partnering with UNESCO since 2000 to organise online Annual Conference of Registered Teachers. (NAN)

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