The recent decision by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) to grant admission waivers to candidates seeking the Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) without sitting for the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME) is, on the surface, a “compassionate” response to a genuine crisis. Colleges of Education have been bleeding enrolment for years.

The intention may seem good, but if implemented, it will worsen the abysmal standard of our education.

Nobody disputes the scale of the teacher shortage. Schools in rural Kebbi, Zamfara, and parts of Borno, for instance, operate with skeleton staff, with a single teacher sometimes managing multiple classes across different grade levels. The government is also right that Colleges of Education have become an afterthought in Nigeria’s tertiary education landscape. Who is to blame, if not government?

The assumption driving this waiver is that easing admission will widen the pool of prospective teachers. But will widening the pool make those entering it effective teachers? Research on teacher effectiveness consistently shows that the academic preparedness of trainees at entry is among the strongest predictors of classroom performance later.

A 2019 Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC) study found that many NCE graduates struggled with content knowledge in their subject areas, a problem traced partly to weak foundational preparation at entry. Removing UTME without replacing it with any equivalent quality check deepens that problem rather than solving it.

The Nigeria Union of Teachers (NUT) has been blunt. Its president, Audu Titus Amba, argues that teaching should not become a refuge for those who could not gain admission elsewhere. That is a firm defence of the profession’s integrity at a moment when that integrity is already under strain. When every other tertiary programme requires UTME but teacher education is exempted, the message, however unintended, is that teaching is for academically ungifted elements. That is a betrayal of education!

That perception will travel into staffrooms, parental conversations and the minds of bright students deciding whether to take education seriously as a vocation.

Finland and Singapore, whose education systems are globally admired, select teachers from the top three of graduates and invest heavily in their academic grounding. Even here in Nigeria in the dim past, the best students were trained to become teachers. But when those who had no value for education captured political power, they started neglecting teachers’ welfare and training.

To make teaching great again, Colleges of Education must be properly funded and teachers given a special remuneration that will attract the very best into the profession even from foreign countries. Welfare, not reduction of standards, is key. We call on the Federal Government, through the Nation Council on Education (NCE) to repackage education in Nigeria, bringing back its past glory.

Waiving UTME for teachers will finally bury what remains of education in Nigeria.