TRCN conducts professional qualifying exam for 11,000 candidates
By Doosuur Iwambe
Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) in a bid to ensure quality in the schools conducted Professional Qualifying Examination (PQE),for about 11,350 candidates across the country.
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Mr Andrew Adejo, who monitored the conduct of the examination on Saturday in Abuja on, expressed satisfaction over the conduct.
Adejo, said the new technology introduced by the council to get the authenticity of the certificate of teachers, would go a long way to weed out quackery from the teaching profession.
According to him, last year we just moved from accreditation and candidates go straight to write but this year, accreditation has a double level.
”This year, candidates will have to first do the accreditation, fill the form and you also cross-check your slip with the APP that TRCN has developed to give it authenticity.
”So I think they are improving on incremental basis every year on the process for PQE for teachers.
”The Federal Government is making efforts to weed out quacks but you know it is very difficult but this exam is part of the way we can weed out quacks.
”We are insisting that before you can be a teacher in every school, you must meet the basic minimum standard.
He said the ministry was working on cleaning the teachers’ database so as to have less quacks in the profession so that quackery does not affect the standard and quality of the country’s education.
He, therefore, urged state and federal educational quality assurance team to ensure teachers have the required qualifications and skills to teach.
The Registrar of TRCN, Prof.
Josiah Ajiboye said the report from centres across the country indicated hitch free processes.
”There has been improvement in the accreditation process because part of what we did was to develop an APP to accredit the candidates and this is working perfectly well.
”For this year, we have over 11,350 with Lagos having the highest with 1,500 candidates followed by FCT, while Kebbi has the lowest candidates.
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” So, what we did is to combine states with lower candidates,” he said.
The registrar said that the council was leveraging on technology for its operations to track quackery while also putting necessary measures to weed out quacks through its school monitoring programme mechanism.
Speaking with some of the candidates, they attested to that fact that the technology introduced by the council had help in checking some of the discrepancies in its accreditation processes.
