Mr Sonny Echono, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, says every qualified and licensed teacher would be employed as part of efforts to rid the system of unqualified teachers.
Echono said this while monitoring the May Diet of the Teachers Professional Qualifying Examination (PQE) organised by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) in Abuja on Saturday.
He said, “We are dead serious about implementing the policy and we are also working very hard to ensure that we also are ready.
“The first thing that is going to happen is that TRCN and NTI are compiling a database of qualified teachers, those that have been certified, those who have taken this examination who are unemployed.
“And we are going to do it and even segregate them state by state and make them available to each state.
“That is going to be the first starting point, that anybody who has been certified as a teacher should be employed because we have no excuse for that.
“We have a huge dearth of qualified teachers, so all those that we have should be engaged to work, and all those who are not qualified, we are sorry, we have to move them out of the system,” he said.
Echono reiterated that the deadline for flushing unqualified teachers from the classrooms remained December 31, adding that additional diets of the PQE may be conducted in order for teachers to meet up with the deadline.
The Permanent secretary commended TRCN for the smooth and simplified process of the examination describing it as being up to international standards.
30,000 teachers wrote the examination in 50 centres nationwide.