The Federal Government is committed to ensuring quality and standards in privately-owned colleges of education,  Executive Secretary of the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE), Prof. Mohammed Junaid, said in Abuja at the commencement of accreditation visits to private colleges of education in the country.

He said the exercise was aimed at ensuring that private colleges of education complied with the Federal Government’s guidelines and the NCCE regulations or face sanctions.

He said that it was the first time the Commission would be verifying private colleges to assess the quality of schools that produced teachers for the country.

“We will assess the level of infrastructure in the colleges, the student/teacher ratio, the quality of teaching staff and facilities,’’ he said.

The executive secretary said that the number of colleges of education was on the increase while the Commission approved only 36.

“The number of private colleges of education is soaring. “Whereas in 1971 we had only two private colleges of education, this figure rose to 21 between 1977 and 2008.

“Thirteen more were established in the 2009 and 2010 period, giving a total number of 36 privately owned colleges of education that has been sanctioned by the National Commission for Colleges of Education.

“You know that quality is the other side of the quantity coin. “While numbers are soaring and multiplying, then the other issue of quality becomes very critical. “So one of the major objectives of our coming out is to ensure that the standards that we have set for the Nigerian certificate in education are being maintained.’’

Junaid said that teachers were very critical in the education system because they lay the foundation for development and were usually assigned to students whether they liked it or not.

He said that students could not choose who their teachers should be, unlike doctors or lawyers, who could be changed due to dissatisfaction in their services.

“We don’t want to wait for the products of our colleges to be out before the users tell us that they are not good quality, we have to solve all the issues now.”

“We carried out verification exercise to states and federal colleges of education in 2007 and 2008, and today we are flagging off the verification exercise to privately owned colleges of education across the country.

“There would be many other teams visiting privately-owned colleges of education throughout the country doing system assessment, comparing what we have on the ground with the norms and standards that we have set at the Commission for the running of colleges of education.

“One of the things we’ll be looking for is compliance with the Federal Government regulations and the National Commission for Colleges of Education policy guidelines for running of colleges of education; we would verify that these are being complied with.”

Junaid said that henceforth accreditation and verification by the Commission would continue in all federal, state and private colleges of education.