The Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN) said only 75%, a total of 28,094 candidates passed the exam.

The council’s registrar Josiah Olusegun Ajiboye who disclosed that about 7,023 candidates didn’t write the exam, added that majority of them have actually written the exam before and will be allowed to write the exam at the next available opportunity.

Prof. Ajiboye said: “On the whole, about 44,363 candidates registered for the examination but the total examined was 37,340 candidates. Due to the prevalence of Covid-19 and something like that, a large number of candidates could not move around or write the exam.

“On the whole, 28,094 candidates passed the exam, which is 75.24 percent while a total of 9, 246 candidates failed, giving a percentage of 24.76 percent.”

While saying the performance recorded in the exam was encouraging, the TRCN boss said the exam was introduced as a gate-keeping measure for the teaching profession.

“We can see that it is a fair result- 75.24 percent is not bad. Gradually we are beginning to see that the pre-service teachers are getting familiarised with the use of computers. Initially when we started the failure late was very high.

“The major reason we introduced the teacher qualifying exam is that we felt it is not possible for everybody to just walk in to the profession and just register like that (without writing an exam). There is no profession that does not have gate-keeping measures,” he said.

Prof. Ajiboye commended the new requirement in Colleges of Education that makes  it mandatory for academic staff to have a TRCN registration certificate before they can be promoted.

Earlier, the Chairman of ECAN, Mr Chuks Ukwuatu, said the association decided to pay the thank you visit to TRCN’s registrar to express deep appreciation to the agency for sponsoring a capacity building workshop for ECAN a few weeks ago.

Ukwuatu assured the readiness of ECAN to always collaborate with TRCN to achieve its mandate.

Lagos State with 3,574 candidates had the highest number of candidates that sat for the TRCN July’s professional qualifying exam while Ekiti State with 235 candidates had the least number.

The next batch of the Professional Qualifying Exam is expected to take place in early November, 2020.