He delivered the ultimatum on Saturday June 9, 2018 while monitoring the 2018 Bach ‘A’ Teachers’ Professional Qualifying Examination (PQE) in Abuja.
Twenty-two thousand prospective teachers sat for the computer-based PQE which took place across different centers between June 7 - 9, 2018.
Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education Mr. Sonny Echono, who represented the minister during the monitoring exercise, said if teachers are not qualified and properly equipped, the students would also fall short of standards. “The person at the center of it all is the teacher, not the pupils.
If the teachers are not qualified and properly equipped, how can they give our children the best?” he asked.
Echono said a deadline for sacking teachers without requisite professional qualification has been set and it will be enforced. He also said, “It is an embarrassment to us that we have so many qualified people without jobs and we are giving the jobs to people who are not qualified. It is insane.”
He said in the past, the right number of teachers was not available which was why unqualified teachers were tolerated; “we appreciate that those not qualified helped us to meet that shortfall.”
It would be recalled that the National Council on Education had in 2003 fixed 2006 as the deadline for unqualified teachers already in the system to obtain NCE, which is the minimum teaching qualification.
It is unfortunate that 12 years after that deadline expired, we are still talking about disengaging unqualified teachers.
Regrettably too, the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria [TRCN] failed to enforce professionalization guidelines as contained in the TRCN Act of 1993.
The Act makes it an offence under section 17(2) for anyone to engage in teaching without being registered by TRCN.
The Act stipulates that the punishment for such an offence shall be a fine of five thousand naira or two years jail term or both.
Two years ago, Minister of State for Education Prof. Anthony Anwukah said at a party to mark his sixty-fifth birthday that plans were underway to sack teachers and lecturers who lack the basic qualification to teach.
Anwukah argued that “Nigeria’s education system in terms of teachers is bedeviled with statistics of more than 50 percent of persons who were not trained to be teachers”.
While we support every government policy or measure that will rid the education system of quack teachers especially at the basic level, it is important to ask some germane questions if the recent sack threat were to serve any meaningful purpose or be taken seriously by teachers.
Is the sack threat directed at all unqualified teachers serving under the federal, state and local governments or targeted only at those working under the federal government?
This question is pertinent because most teachers in the country are not employees of the federal government that issued the sack threat.
Rather, they are employed by state and local governments, which over the years could not summon the political will to sack unlicensed teachers.
States employ teachers through the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) and the State Secondary Education Board (SEB).
the extent to which state governments will comply with a federal government directive to sack unlicensed teachers is therefore doubtful.
Beyond the sack threat is the need for government to set standards on teachers’ welfare, especially prompt payment of salaries and allowances.
Otherwise, even the licensed ones retained in the job would dump teaching for better paying jobs. quality teaching is not just about being a licensed teacher. There must be regular re-training of teachers, an essential factor in quality education.
While we encourage every teacher, serving or unemployed, to obtain a professional license from TRCN before the 2019 deadline, we urge TRCN to ensure that no unqualified teacher is found in the classroom after 2019.
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