Josiah Ajiboye, the registrar and chief executive officer of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) has disclosed that the federal government is mapping out plans to ensure that public school teachers are encouraged.
The TRCN boss speaking recently in a radio programme with Public Square, a Nigeria Info Midday programme where he was a special guest said concerning teachers’ welfare which according to him is a major determinant factor in driving professionalism in the sector, the federal government is putting efforts in place to ensure that teachers in public schools are encouraged.
“For example, the TRCN is pushing for the government of each state to adopt the policy of ‘one teacher one laptop’. The teacher will pay for it in instalments,” he said.
According to the National Centre for Education Statistics (NCES), the primary federal entity for collecting, analysing, and reporting data related to education in the United States and other nations, to deliver high-quality education, schools must attract, develop, and retain effective teachers. And to achieve this, working conditions play an important role in a school’s ability to do so.
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Experts have decried the working conditions of public school teachers in Nigeria, which they ascribed as reasons many do not want to identify with the profession.
Meanwhile, Ajiboye regretted that many teachers in private schools are yet to register with TRCN. He noted that whereas over 83 percent of public school teachers are registered, an insignificant number of teachers in private schools are registered.
According to Ajiboye, most private school teachers do not take the teaching profession seriously.
“They see it as a stop-gap. Let me just manage the job until I get something better. They do not know that Nigerian teachers are in high demand across the globe. There is a need for teachers in both public and private schools to train and retrain at intervals. The teachers’ licence is renewed every three years,” he said.
“We have problems with the private schools. A large number of teachers in private schools are not registered. They are cheaters, not teachers. They are not even qualified to be registered. It is the quality of teachers that determines the quality of education in any country. Teachers drive the educational standards across the globe.”
