The call was a sequel to the adoption of the report by the Committee on Basic Education and Services at the committee of the House after the lawmakers considered it as a Committee of the Whole.
While the committee is chaired by Prof Julius Ihonvbere, the recommendation was contained in the ‘Report of the Committee on Basic Education and Services on the Call for Recruitment of Qualified and Registered Teachers in Nigerian Schools.’
The PUNCH reported earlier on May 4, 2023, that TRCN, the regulatory body for the teaching profession in Nigeria, claimed that over 70 per cent of private school teachers in the South-West geopolitical zone are unqualified.
The states in the South-West are Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Osun, Ondo and Ekiti.
According to the registrar of the TRCN, Professor Josiah Ajiboye, the teachers are unqualified due to their lack of qualifications to enable them to register with the council.
Earlier in April, the TRCN boss had decried that a lack of professional teachers in schools remains a challenge in the Nigerian education sector.
Ajiboye said to tackle the challenge, the Council remedied over 7,000 quack teachers in Borno, Adamawa, and Yobe states.
TRCN noted that highly committed, dedicated and virile teachers are now difficult to find in schools, stressing that it has affected the level of teaching.
The House committee recommended that the House should “urge the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria to publicise the data of quacks and unqualified teachers per state in Nigeria.”
It also recommended that the Nigeria Union of Teachers, the National Teachers Institutes, and the Association of Arabic Studies are in consonance with the provision of the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria Act, “that a teacher must possess a minimum qualification of Nigeria Certificate in Education and must be registered, certified and licensed.”
According to the lawmakers, there is a need to re-introduce the Teachers Assessment Test to ascertain the quality of teachers. They also stressed the need for the teachers to be inducted by the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria after pre-service training before being given employment.
The committee further said, “There is a need to strengthen the Teacher Registration Council of Nigeria Act to enable it to monitor the recruitment exercise of teachers at all levels of government.
“There is a need for the establishment of a Teachers Academy by the Federal Government, which would serve as an instrument for a uniform standard for Nigerian teachers that graduated from diverse universities and where procedural and practical teaching would be taught.
“The low remuneration of teachers encourages them to migrate from one place to another. Hence, there is an urgent need to make the teaching profession attractive through the enactment of a Teacher’s Salary Structure as it is obtainable in other professions like Nigerian Maritime Authority, Central Bank of Nigeria, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited, etc., with a view to boosting their morale.”
In a related development, the House also considered and adopted the ‘Report of the Committee on Basic Education and Services on a Call for the Rehabilitation of Unity Schools across Nigeria,’ in which the lawmakers sought private sector intervention to restore unity schools.
The committee recommended that the Federal Government should “as a matter of urgency improve the meagre budgetary allocation and releases to the Federal Unity Colleges.”
The lawmakers proposed a four-year budgetary funding plan towards the “complete overhaul of the colleges and restore them back to their glory.”
According to the panel, the National Senior Secondary Education Commission should be adequately funded to address instructional materials and infrastructural facilities, and teacher development requirements of the Federal Unity Colleges.
The committee further recommended that, “Associations like old student‘s bodies and parents-teachers association that have been contributing immensely to the development of some of these schools should be encouraged to take up more viable projects across the schools to reduce government burden;
“It is time to involve high net-worth individuals, banks and other business concerns in the revamping and reconstructions of the FUCs if they are to survive and remain relevant to their mandates.
“A voluntary ‘Adopt-a-school’ committee shall be set up by the Federal Government to ensure that relevant agencies, corporations and individuals contribute to the development of the FUCs.
“The budgetary meal subsidies allocation should be increased to N500 for students per meal.”
