How TRCN ‘misfired’ on dearth of teachers

The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) last week raised an alarm over the inadequate number of teachers qualified to teach in Nigerian schools. In a story published in the Daily Trust edition of Thursday August 3, 2017; the Registrar of TRCN, Professor Josiah OlusegunAjiboye told newsmen at a media briefing in Abuja that only 1.8 million teachers have licenses to teach in schools across the country. 

Professor Ajiboye hinted that with the surge in population of school children and increase in number of schools, the 1.8 million teachers licensed to teach “is an indication that shortage of teachers has hit crisis point”. Ajiboye also disclosed that TRCN would publish the number of subject teachers in each state and “take away all unregistered teachers from schools by next year”. 

For the sake of structuring the argument in this piece, it is important to begin the discourse with some semantic clarifications. The phrase ‘crisis point’ is used generally to describe a situation that has become very bad. The import of the Registrar’s assertion as quoted in the previous paragraph would, therefore, be that there is gross inadequacy of teachers qualified to teach in schools in Nigeria. This, in reality, is not true as claimed by the TRCN boss. There could be dearth of qualified teachers particularly in some subject areas but certainly not at crisis point. 

One is persuasively promptedby the number of trained and qualified teachers turned out annually by various teacher training institutions across the countryto fault the Registrar’s claim. They include the National Teachers Institute (NTI), Colleges of Education in all the 36 States of the federation and the FCT (with many states having more than one); Federal Colleges of Education in nearly all the 36 states in the country; Faculties of Education in most federal, state, and private universities in the country; and Institutes of Education which are conventionally affiliatedto universities. Expectedly, the number that graduates from these institutions should have increased the statistics of trained and qualified teachers available to teach in Nigerian schools. 

The critical opinion of this writer sprouts from the failure of the Chief Executive of TRCN to distinguish between licensed and qualified teachers. A teacher could be qualified to teach but might wittingly or unwittingly choose to remain unlicensed. This category of teachers, which presumably adds up to large statistics, exists in many northern states of the country. Most of those in this category are NCE graduates who have remained unemployed for years.

While some of them have refused to obtain registration/licence from TRCN because they are unemployed, others especially among the employed deliberately snubbed registration because they regard teaching as a ‘stepping stone’ to other jobs that would earn them better pay. In caseTRCNdoubts the alarming number of the unemployed among NCE graduates in the country, it is encouraged to advertise teaching vacancies.The number of applicants that respond would speak for the situation.

The existence, thus, of teachers within the system who are though qualified to teach but are unlicensed as well as the unlicensed who are qualified and employable as teachers but have remained unemployed is a strong reason that should have held OgaAjiboye back from asserting that shortage of qualified teachers has hit a crisis point. The statement sounds too sweeping even though it is coming from a public officer who, by his appointment, should be an educationist. It would have been apt if the Registrar had decried ‘shortage of licensed teachers’ in place of ‘shortage of qualified teachers’. 

But even then, it would have added credibility to the statement if Professor Ajiboye had taken time to provide useful statistics to corroborate his claim. The statistics of 1.8million as the number of licensed teachers available in the country isn’t just enough to declare that the dearth of teachers in the country has hit crisis point. Knowing the total number of teachers required is also important because that would guide the Nigerian public better in appreciating the deficit challenges which the Registrar intended to bring to public knowledge. Doing this should not be a great task to TRCN because it should, by its mandate, have necessary records. 

TRCN was established in 1993 to regulate and control the teaching profession in Nigeria. Similarly, it has a duty to open and maintain a register of qualified teachers. It would be recalled that TRCN hinted earlier in the year that unregistered teachers in the country who fail to obtain the professional teaching certificate would not be allowed to teach beyond 2017.Well, I believe the Registrar is aware of the unlicensed teachers employed to teach under the federal government N-Power scheme. What happens to them, if one may ask, after this deadline?

To tackle the dilemmaof the existence of unlicensed teachers within the system, there may be need for TRCN to, within the powers of the Act establishing it, compel states’ Universal Basic Education Boards (SUBEBs) to disengage qualified teachers who have refused to register and obtain the license to teach. This, however, may only be practicable in public schools because proprietors of private schools prefer to employ unlicensed and/or unqualified personnel because of the depletedremuneration they pay to such quack teachers.

It would hence be necessary for TRCN to efficiently engage in the close monitoring of private schools in order to ensure compliance with government policy on minimum teaching qualification. The monitoring is also to guarantee that only licenced personnel operate as teachers. May Allah (SWT) guide chief executives of MDAs in the country against raising false alarms in the discharge of their duties especially when publicstatements are made justin orderfor them, the CEOs, to be heard, amin.