The Nigerian government says Teachers’ Professional Qualifying Examination PQE, remains a major strategy to standardise teaching profession in Nigeria.
The government also said individuals practicing teaching profession who are not duly registered with the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria, TRCN, were not teachers.
The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Mr. David Adejo, stated these at SASCON International School, Abuja while monitoring the TRCN PQE.
“For instance, in the medical profession, after your university, there is a compulsory exam you must pass before you are a doctor. For a teacher, you must pass through this compulsory exam before you are a teacher.
“So those who have not passed through this process are only at best to be said to be impersonating, and government cannot allow that going forward; we need to standardise the teaching practice. This exam is one of the things that will do that,” Adejo said.
He applauded the conduct of the exercise in Abuja noting that the processes of accreditation, examination, and resetting of the systems for the next set of candidate was great as it all went seamless.
Rescheduling examinations for states
Meanwhile, the TRCN’s Acting Director of Certification and Licensing, Dr Jacenta Ogboso, disclosed that the Council has rescheduled its teachers Professional Qualifying Examination, PQE, in Sokoto and Zamfara states due to challenges of insecurity.
Ogboso added that a total number of 9,204 candidates participated in the exercise nationwide, with the exception of the two states.
She noted further that 125 candidates registered for the exercise in Sokoto while 151 candidates registered in Zamfara state, adding that the examination in the two states will be rescheduled as soon as the situation gets better.
“We have to reschedule the exam for Sokoto and Zamfara states because we want to be sure of the situation. So those two are not writing today. They are going to either write online or we find another time,” she said.
She disclosed that 663 candidates sat for the exam in the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
She applauded the conduct of the exercise and described it as very smooth following the five years experience of the council in conducting the exam.
Exam malpractices
On fighting malpractice in the conduct of the exercise, she said TRCN has put in place a process of accreditation through a platform that the ICT department has developed, which is able to detect the actual candidates registered for the examination to avoid impersonation of candidates.
According to her, every candidate is expected to go to the area where he registered to be accredited.
More so, candidates are not allowed into the exam hall with phones or any banned item to ensure that nobody does anything funny.
Ogboso disclosed that the examination has been reduced to two diet per year due to reduction in applications, adding that the surge in applications earlier experienced at the peak of the PQE was due to the rush to meet the deadline for implementation of government’s policy of ensuring that only professionally qualified teachers were in its school system.
“In 2019, 2020, we recorded 69,000 and in a year we were recording over 100,000; that was at the peak of the registration when TRCN wanted to enter into the implementation of unqualified people leaving the classroom as had been mandated by the federal ministry of education,” she said.
Emmanuel Ukoh
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