No fewer than 15,750 teachers on Saturday wrote the November Diet of the Professional Qualifying Examination for teachers across the country.
The examination is conducted by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) to test the professional knowledge of those in the teaching profession.
Speaking with newsmen during the conduct of the examinations in Abuja on Saturday, the
Director, Certification and Licensing, TRCN, Dr Jacinta Ezeahurukwe said the examination would ensure that teachers were licenced before going into the classrooms.
She said: “TRCN PQE is taking place all over the nation, it started on Nov. 23 in some states, some other states wrote yesterday and today the remaining states are writing.
“In all we have 15,750 teachers writing the examination for the Batch B across the country. There was a time we conducted exams for over 100,000 candidates. Our target is for those that have not registered.
“The exam is mandatory because teaching is a profession and for every profession, there must be a professional qualifying examination.
“One of the features of a profession is that apart from getting the academic qualification, the person must have a qualifying examination and must be registered and licensed.
“If you don’t write these examinations, how do we know you are qualified to be registered as a teacher? So this examination is not testing subject knowledge, it’s testing the professional knowledge of the teaching profession.”
Ezeahurukwe said that the qualifying examination provided the content of the foundational knowledge that a teacher must possess and exhibit, saying this is however contained in the teachers professional standards.
She, therefore, said that the results were expected to be out in two weeks.
