The Chief Executive Officer of the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), Dr Ronke Soyombo, has submitted that many individuals in the teaching profession in Nigeria lack the necessary qualifications to be teachers.
According to her, the prevalence of unqualified teachers is more common in private schools than in public schools.
Speaking as a guest on Monday during Channels Television’s The Morning Brief, Dr Soyombo observed that the lack of qualified teachers is responsible for the dwindling standard of education in Nigeria.
She argued that attending a teacher’s college does not confer automatic qualification to be a teacher on any individual.
The TRCN boss, speaking against the backdrop of the 2025 World Teachers’ Day celebration, also lamented that while there were teachers without the required qualifications, there were also those with genuine interest in the profession who could not be enrolled due to a lack of qualifications.
Naijaonpoint reports that she, however, disclosed that the council is currently taking steps to tackle the shortage of teachers in the profession.
“There are many unqualified teachers in the profession. We have those teaching in classrooms but don’t have the teaching qualifications, particularly in private schools.
“Again, it is one thing for you to say you have been to teacher’s college, and it is another thing to be able to break it down to the level of the students to soothe their specific needs. This challenge has to be addressed, and as soon as we have the accelerated programme, that is going to bring a lot of teachers in, because they don’t want to come to public schools. And what is stopping them is that they don’t have education degrees.
“We currently have about 1.4 million teachers registered with the TRCN, and our target in the next two years is to get to 20 million. What we have done is to digitise our systems, so that more people can be able to register.
“Every teacher has a gift which is different from one person to another. But what we are propagating in education is for everybody to come together and plan lessons together.
“You might be three teachers teaching a particular year group, but if you come together and plan lessons together, you are bound to come up with something richer than when you work in isolation.
“When you also look at the 21st-century education itself, it is very important that we pass the culture of collaboration down to our children.
“We need to allow our children to collaborate with mixed ability groupings. Teachers are really eager this year to see how they can build more on collaboration in their schools.
“On leadership as well, teachers can go to other schools to see which ones are performing well, and take the good practices to their various schools,” she said.
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