FG to Make TRCN Registration a Condition for Teachers’ Employment
By Uchechukwu Nnaike
The federal government has announced that only teachers dully registered with the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) would be employed to teach in public schools.
The criteria may be applied in the recruitment of over 500,000 teachers that the federal government intends to partner with states to recruit.
The Minister of State for Education, Professor Anthony Anwukah
Who made this known at the grand finale of the Maltina Teacher of the Year in Lagos, also advised teachers to invest the best of themselves in the students under their charge knowing that the days of recognition and reward will come.
“I urge you to remain exemplary in your different states and continue to impact the generation of young people that our country needs to hold its own in the comity of nations”, he said.
He stated that at a time like this when the country was in a resolute march of change and turnaround, education occupied a strategic place in the agenda of the current administration to bring about a positive turn of events for the country.
The minister expressed government’s commitment to creating innovative strategies and strengthening institutional structures towards revitalising the education sector. He highlighted some of the strategies to include addressing out-of-school crisis; strengthening basic and secondary education; teachers’ education; and generating education data for planning.
Others are curriculum and benchmark minimum academic standard; technical and vocational education and training; quality assurance and access to higher education; ICT in education and library services.
While commending Nigerian Breweries- Felix Ohiwerei Education Trust Fund for the extent it has gone in contributing to the country’s education sector, he expressed delight that the company had completed and handed over the staff residence at the school of last year’s teacher of the year before crowning a new winner this year.
A teacher at the Special Education Centre for Exceptional Children, Uyo, Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Imoh Essien was pronounced the 2016 Maltina teacher of the year. He was rewarded with N1 million in addition to the N500,000 he received as state champion from Akwa Ibom. He will also get N1 million every year for five years; a training programme abroad and a block of six classrooms built at his school.
An English teacher from Borno State, Mohammed Binta Lawal, who was the first runner-up last year, repeated the feat this year, while Ogwu Patrick from Government Day Secondary School, Adankolo, Lokoja, Kogi State emerged the second runner-up. Each received N500,000 as state champions and an additional N1 million and N750,000 respectively.
