How to obtain Teachers' Registration Council of Nigeria TRCN Licence
Abdussalam Amoo
19th September 2017
Every profession has minimum requirements of entry, without which no one could be deemed a professional. In the past, you can be legally regarded a teacher in Nigeria based on your certification.
Teaching certification is obtained after the successful completion of required courses in a teacher-training institution. The institutions, according to the National Policy on Education, include the Colleges of Education, Faculties and Institutes of Education in Nigerian universities, Schools of Education in the Polytechnics, and the National Teachers Institute. The National Mathematical Centre and the National Institute for Nigerian Languages are also there.
Certification is no longer enough. Licence is very important. You must be licensed to practice the teaching profession. That is where TRCN comes in.
TRCN means the Teachers’ Registration Council of Nigeria. It is an agency under the Federal Ministry of Education, established with the major mandate of regulation and control of the teaching profession at all levels of the Nigerian Education System, both in the public and the private sectors.
Teaching is a noble profession that attracts all manner of people, most of whom just found themselves teaching accidentally. There are, of course, those who passionately chose teaching intentionally for the purpose of reshaping the next generation.
Irrespective of the choice, condition and motive behind joining an educational establishment, every teacher who wants to be taken seriously is expected to get TRCN registration to gain appropriate recognition.
Several local and international schools now require teachers to present their TRCN-issued teaching licences to be qualified for employment. Even those that earned their teaching qualification in Nigeria may be asked of their an attestation from the TRCN that they are qualified teachers in the country. That one is called the “Letter of Professional Standing.”
You wouldn’t want to lose that mouth-watering offer merely because of a licence you could have obtained long ago. Register for licensing with the TRCN today!
Beyond registering and licensing qualified teachers, the following are the functions of the TRCN.
The above list shows that the TRCN serves as a regulatory agency for all those in the teaching profession at any level of education. It means that already licensed teachers may have their licence withdrawn over some misconduct deemed inappropriate of a teacher.
The steps applicable to obtain your TRCN Licence include the Professional Qualifying Examination and the Registration.
The examination is a pre-requisite for registration. From 2017/2018, the TRCN had introduced writing the Professional Qualifying Examination (PQE) as a requirement to be issued TRCN licence.
Before then, only registration with your credentials used to be sufficient. Now, you have to pass the exam before you can register as a teacher. Students in any of the teacher-training institutions get to write the exam during the final semesters on campus. But for those who had graduated without writing it, that exam holds twice in a year.
The PQE is computer-based and you must therefore be computer literate aside your competence in education pedagogy.
Visit the nearest TRCN state office to you to obtain and complete registration forms for the PQE. Completed registration forms must be returned with evidence of payment of examination fees payable according to categories thus;
A candidate would be designated to an examination centre in the state of registration.
Those who passed the examination will still pay registration fee for eventual registration as professional teachers. Like it is for the PQE, the candidate would pay according to their academic qualifications. Then, they will also pay an annual due to the TRCN.
The table below shows the cost of TRCN Registration and annual dues in relation to various academic qualifications.
For the Letter of Professional Standing (explained above), an applicant would pay N40,000.
Payments could be done online via remita for both the PQE and the registration.
Fill the deposit slip and ensure you provide the following information:
You do not need to provide an account number on the teller. Inform the bank staff processing the transaction that the payment is to be made through Remita.
Visit any of TRCN Office close to you with your teller/invoice and you will be issued a cash collection receipt to enable you process your registration.
Officials at the TRCN would intimate you of the readiness of the teaching licence in due course.
You are to be inducted into the teaching profession alongside your colleagues from your respective teacher-training institutions.
Do you need any clarification about this guide? Ask in the comment box below.