We need 250,000 teachers annually to address shortage – TRCN

The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), has said in order to address dearth of teachers being witnessed in primary and post primary schools, there was the need to employ 250,000 teachers annually. TRCN Registrar, Josiah Ajiboye who made this known yesterday in Abuja, revealed that Nigeria currently had over two million qualified and registered teachers in its public and private primary and post-primary schools as the Council had registered more than 500,000 qualified teachers since 2016 as part of effort to eliminate quackery in the teaching profession.

He, however, stressed that although the country was in dire need of teachers, it would not compromise standards as it was working towards eliminating unregistered teachers from the profession in 2020 beginning from six states- Nasarawa, Ogun, Ebonyi, Cross River, Jigawa and Bauchi. Ajiboye said: “Some teachers are leaving the profession; some are retiring and are not being replaced.

We need about 250,000 teachers annually because we have a shortage of teachers. The insurgency in the Northeast has made the situation critical. “Within the period that I have been in the saddle, over 500,000 teachers have been registered within the period of two years, because before I came, they registered just over one million but about now, we have close to two million teachers that have been registered. “The Council had taken a position a long time ago and it was reaffirmed at its Kano meeting in 2017 that anybody that is not qualified, not registered and licenced by TRCN by December 2019 would not be allowed in a classroom.

“The moratorium period was two years and we now have a year to go. By January 2020, we will begin to do enforcement and remove them from our classrooms. “We have the list, we have the database of those who are qualified and those who are in school teaching but not qualified. It is going to be a continuous exercise. We will cascade to the rest of the country and route out those who are not qualified from the profession.”