The Federal Government is setting up Teachers Information System (TIS), a data base of registered, licensed and qualified teachers who can take up teaching profession in the country.
This is with a view to ridding the profession of quacks.
The Registrar of Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) Professor Olusegun Ajiboye gave the disclosure at the southwest stakeholders meeting held at the University of Ibadan with Chairmen of State Universal Basic Education Board and Post-primary schools Board in the six states of south-western Nigeria.
While thanking governments in the southwest of the country for working with council to upgrade education quality, the TRCN further sought support of governors of southwest in ensuring teachers in their schools are registered and licensed.
According to Ajiboye, the Council is putting together data base for Nigerian parents to access information on the qualification of those teaching their children and the kind of school to enrol their wards.
The TRCN boss who stated that the Council now has near 2million registered and qualified teachers in Nigeria said with the setting up of Teacher Information System (TIP), parents can distance their children from being registered in schools where non-professionals are employed.
While expressing joy of appreciable compliance by public school teachers in registering with the Council to get registered and licensed to practice in Nigeria, Professor Ajiboye stated that private schools employing unregistered, qualified and licensed teachers will be sealed from January 2019.
The TRCN Registrar who noted that parents sending their children to private schools are paying heavily added that they must get quality education in return which can only come from professional teachers and not quacks who do not know anything about teaching methodologies.
While saying the Private schools association in Nigeria have pleaded with the TRCN to give them some time to get their teachers registered hinting that that window ends in 2018 while total enforcement is January 2019.
“With the database of Nigerian teachers being collected by the TRCN, parents will now be able to visit our website and check the names of those teaching their children if they are qualified or not. They can use such information to run away from bad schools and quacks teaching in private schools. We call this Teacher information system. We are setting up task force to ensure implementation on private schools by January 2019. You cannot be collecting big monies from parents and offering them quack teachers to basterdise the future of students. We are set to put a stop to that. We are getting consultants to monitor them and they will go with security operatives. This is the law and it must be obeyed”
Ajiboye assured Nigerian teachers that the council is meeting with highest political office holders in the country including the National assembly members on the issue of Teacher welfare and budgetary allocation to education stating that no nation will develop beyond the quality of her teachers.
The stakeholders in their contributions tasked TRCN to work with state governors to ensure registration of all teachers in the employ of their states and fight for better welfare conditions for teachers and ensure that teacher recruitment by the federal government are done on merit and not on political considerations.
The meeting was attended by delegates from all the states in southwest Nigeria with a promise to further sensitise teachers to get registered and licensed.
