The Teachers Registration Council Of Nigeria, TRCN, has lamented the lack of qualified teachers in Nigeria as one of the reasons for the drop in educational standards in the country.
The Chief Executive Officer of the Council, Dr Ronke Soyombo, raised the alarm on Monday while responding to questions in an interview on ‘The Morning Brief’, a programme on Channels Television to celebrate the 2025 World Teachers Day.
While speaking on this year’s theme, ‘Recasting Teaching As A Collaborative Profession’, Dr Soyombo noted that while there were teachers without required qualifications, there were also those with genuine interest in the profession but could not be enrolled due to lack of qualifications.
She, however, said the Council is currently taking steps to tackle shortage of teachers in the profession.
“There are many unqualified teachers in the profession. We have those teaching in classrooms but don’t have the teaching qualifications, particularly in private schools.
“Again, it is one thing for you to say you have been to teacher’s college, and it is another thing to be able to break it down to the level of the students to soothe their specific needs. This challenge has to be addressed, and as soon as we have the accelerated programme, that is going to bring a lot of teachers in, because they don’t want to come to public schools. And what is stopping them is that they don’t have education degrees.
“We currently have about 1.4 million teachers registered with the TRCN, and our target in the next two years is to get to 20 million. What we have done is to digitise our systems, so that more people can be able to register.
“Every teacher has a gift which is different from one person to another. But what we are propagating in education is for everybody to come together and plan lessons together.
“You might be three teachers teaching a particular year group, but if you come together and plan lessons together, you are bound to come up with something richer than when you work in isolation,” he said.
There are many unqualified teachers in Nigeria – TRCN