28,094 teachers pass professional qualifying exam – TRCN Featured News By Vincent UFUOMA On Sep 3, 2020 THE Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) says about 28,094 teachers have passed its annual Professional Qualifying Examination which was held in July, 2020. Josiah Ajiboye, Registrar of TRCN disclosed this in Abuja on Thursday. The major mandates of TRCN as a government agency are the regulation and control of the teaching profession at all levels of the Nigerian education system, both in the public and private sectors. Ajiboye also revealed that a total of 9, 246 candidates failed in the Batch A Professional Qualifying Examination in which teachers from the 36 states and Federal Capital Territory (FCT) took part. He added that candidates from Kaduna and Rivers states also took part in the exercise after the required permits were secured from the state governments. “On the whole, about 44,363 candidates registered for the examination but the total examined was 37,340 candidates. Due to the prevalence of COVID-19 and something like that, a large number of candidates could not move around or write the exam,” the TRCN Registrar said. “We have about 7,023 candidates that didn’t write the exam. Majority of these people have actually written the exam before . They have been noted and what we are going to do is to allow them to write the exam at the next available opportunity.” “On the whole, 28,094 candidates passed the exam, which is 75.24 per cent while a total of 9, 246 candidates failed, giving a percentage of 24.76,” he said. Ajiboye commended the recent move in Colleges of Education that makes it mandatory for academic staff to have a TRCN registration certificate before they can be promoted. He stated that the examination was introduced as a gate-keeping measure to enhance the quality of teachers in the teaching profession. Advertisement “We can see that it is a fair result- 75.24 per cent is not bad. Gradually we are beginning to see that the pre-service teachers are getting familiarised with the use of computers. Initially when we started the failure rate was very high. “The major reason we introduced the teacher qualifying exam is that we felt it is not possible for everybody to just walk in to the profession and just register like that (without writing an exam). There is no profession that does not have gate-keeping measures,” he said. Earlier, the Chairman of ECAN, Chuks Ukwuatu, said the association decided to pay the thank you visit to TRCN’s registrar to express deep appreciation to the agency for sponsoring a capacity building workshop for ECAN a few weeks ago. Ukwuatu assured the readiness of ECAN to always collaborate with TRCN to achieve its mandate.