TheCable

Over 15,000 candidates took part in the second batch of the professional qualifying examination (PQE) organised by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) on Saturday.

Jacinta Ezeahurukwe, TRCN director of certification and licensing, disclosed the figure while monitoring the conduct of the examination in Abuja.

The first batch of the examination was conducted in May across the country.

“TRCN PQE is taking place all over the nation. It started on November 23 in some states; some other states wrote yesterday, and today the remaining states are writing,” Ezeahurukwe said.

“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 do not write this examination, how do we know you are qualified to be registered as a teacher? So this examination is not testing subject knowledge, it is testing the professional knowledge of the teaching profession.”

Ezeahurukwe added that the results of the examination are expected to be out in two weeks time.

“This is a computer exams and we expect that as candidates are writing the computers are marking. However, we will still take our time to sieve out the results, analyse it, look at it and have the management to consider it and approve,” she added.