16,614 teachers take professional qualifying exam nationwide
By Uji A Iliyasu
Abuja
At least 16,614 candidates sat for the November 2024 diet of the Teachers’ Professional Qualifying Examination (PQE), conducted by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) across the 36 states of the federation and FCT, Saturday.
The examination, conducted in Abuja and major cities in the country, was hitch-free. Officials of the Federal Ministry of Education were among the observers who monitored the process.
Besides the conduct of the examination, the council under the leadership of Acting Registrar/Chief Executive Officer, Dr Stella-Maria Nwokeocha, is undergoing financial challenges, due to the delisting of the agency from those funded directly by the federal government.
Lamenting the situation, Dr. Nwokeocha said the agency have had to cut down its operational cost, and now merely depend on development partners to survive.
Dr Nwokeocha said the council is undergoing difficulty by taking staff on training and paying their emoluments.
“We meet so many challenges, but we try to cut down on cost, everything boils down to sacrifice, for instance, staff of the agency. I praise them for that because they have been very understanding.
“For something like training, we had to cut down drastically on that, instead we do group training.
“We are calling for improved funding. I have to be open with you, some development partners are helping us in certain ways, but we cannot rely on that alone. We are asking the government to put us back in its funding plan, even if they cannot put us back, they can decide to take up payment of staff salaries,” the registrar said.
Director, Certification and Licencing, TRCN, Dr Jacinta Ezeahurukwe, who spoke with journalists on Saturday, noted that the PQE is designed to test the professional knowledge of those in the teaching profession.
She added that the qualifying test was a prerequisite for licencing and certification of teachers before being allowed to teach in classrooms in Nigeria.
While giving further insight into the conduct of the examination, she revealed that some technological innovations have been introduced to make the test much more seamless.
She said TRCN recently introduced an App which generates examination numbers for the candidates, as against the previous exercise when such numbers were provided manually. She further said that very soon all candidates would have to enrol online and generate their examination details themselves.
“You are aware that we introduced an App that detects impersonation, it ensures that it is only the people that registered for this examination that would write it, which we also use for accreditation.
“Apart from that we used to give them their numbers manually but now we have ensured that the computer generates the number. This is to ensure the sanctity of the examination so that nobody does anything funny. The registration numbers were later communicated to the candidates.
“We are getting to a point where every candidate will be registering online. Each year we improve on our processes. As you can see today the exam is more seamless than before because we have also tried to manage the crowd,” Ezeahurukwe told journalists monitoring the exam in Abuja.