Registrar of the Council, Josiah Ajiboye, disclosed this in Abuja while interacting with journalists on the planned professional qualification examination.

‎“About 30,000 would-be teachers across the states of the federation and the FCT have registered for the examination,” Ajiboye said.

“The examination would hold between June 7 and 8 in all the states of the federation and the FCT. In states like Bauchi, Kaduna and Kano the examination will begin  on Friday, June 7 because of the large number of candidates.”

The registrar said the Professional Qualifying Examination had become one of the benchmark processes for registering professional teachers in Nigeria.

According to him, the PQE was introduced in October 2017 noting that the forthcoming one would be the fourth in the series.

“One of the aims of the examination was to get the teachers prepared technologically in the 21st century.

“It has provided a big experience for us because when we started, many people who took the exam were not computer literate, and that accounted for the large number of failure in the first exam in 2017,” he said.

He said TRCN has achieved the target of getting teachers inclined to computer appreciation, adding that 83.2 per cent passed the exams across to the country.

Ajiboye reiterated that the deadline for flushing out unqualified teachers from the classroom remains December 31, 2019, noting that the deadline has made the council to record an increase in the number of people going to take the May diet of the PQE.

“In the first PQE, we had like 16,000 candidates. In October 2018, we had 22,000; this year we have recorded the highest number.”

“Presently, we have registered about 30,000 candidates.”

“By January 2020, we are going to begin our enforcement and we may likely start from the private schools because our mandate covers both the public and private schools.

“We have more than 80 per cent compliance from public schools, but the major problem we have is private schools.”