By Elisha Arafin

|

An educationist has said the Nigerian educational programme lacks proper monitoring and effective supervision by states’ Ministries of Education are responsible for the employment of unqualified teachers in private schools in South West Nigeria.

Recall that the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) declared some days ago that seventy per cent of private school teachers in the South West are unqualified.

Describing the unqualified teachers as ‘cheaters,’ TRCN claimed that they lacked prerequisites to be registered by the Council, “hence they cannot be called teachers, but cheaters.”

Commenting on the TRCN’s report, a Guidance and Counseling lecturer at Adekunle Ajasin University Akungba-Akoko, Dr Florence Ojewola, stated that many private schools in the South West Nigeria are not willing to pay qualified teachers, hence, employ quacks to teach and pay them meagre salaries.

She added that even the qualified ones need to be better remunerated as some with university degrees earn N15,000 monthly.

Ojewola, however, said also that ineffective supervision and monitoring by State Ministries of Education has allowed private schools to hire unqualified teachers, adding that anyone could establish a school without effective oversight.

“The issue of non-supervision from the ministry gives all these private schools free hands. No effective supervision, no effective monitoring, anybody can wake up and establish a school.

“People that are expected to go for supervision are not adequately prepared for. They complain of no vehicles for their trips to monitor schools. For instance, if those in Akure are asked to monitor a school in Ikare, how easy will it be for them without a vehicle? 

“Instead of them doing an on-the-spot assessment, they just rely on the information given by the school proprietor,” she added.

Ojewola recommended that to make progress in the teaching profession, there must be proper monitoring and effective supervision of educational programs of private schools in all the Southwest states in the country.

She further suggested that lack of proper implementation and poor policy supervision needed to be considered, stating, “In Nigeria, we are good at making policy, but when it comes to implementation, we are a failure.”

She concluded that proper criteria that required a teacher to be registered with the TRCN should be laid down in private schools.

“Before anybody can be employed to teach as a teacher, there are some criteria that they should be registered with the TRCN but in private schools, none will ask for such and it must be made mandatory,” she concluded.