WorldStage– The National Teachers’ Institute (NTI), Kaduna has been mandated to coordinate a new federal government initiative – the Accelerated Teacher Professionalisation Pathway (ATPP) – under the supervision of the Minister of Education, Dr. Tunji Alausa.
Prof. Sadiya Sani Daura, who is the Director and Chief Executive of the institute said the sole aim of the ATPP is to drive the federal government’s intention to professionalise non-professional Nigerian teachers and bridge their qualification gaps.
Initiated by Alausa, ATPP seeks to address a long-standing structural weaknesses in Nigeria’s basic education system, where a significant number of teachers have been teaching without professional qualifications.
Prior to this development, it had been a source of concern to policymakers and other stakeholders in the sector that these teachers were neither licensed by the Teachers Registration Council of Nigeria (TRCN), nor reachable under the professional standards that the TRCN is mandated to enforce.
Interestingly, the largest teacher-training institution in the country, the National Teachers’ Institute (NTI), Kaduna, has been saddled with the responsibility of coordinating the ATPP in partnership with the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC), the TRCN, the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), the National Senior Secondary Education Commission (NSSEC), the National Universities Commission (NUC), and others, in addition to the supervising ministry, the Federal Ministry of Education.
This initiative, the ATPP by the present administration under the Renewed Hope Agenda, is designed to fill an existing gap without phasing out these teachers from the classroom. Instead, it seeks to empower and professionalise them.
The programme will be delivered through two defined routes in blended form: PostgraduateDiploma in Education (PGDE) for serving teachers who hold a degree in a non-education discipline and Professional Diploma in Education (PDE) for serving teachers entering from the National Diploma cadre.
Both the PGDE and PDE routes combine self-paced digital content, facilitated through virtual sessions, structured assessment checkpoints, and a supervised teaching practice component that is verified in the teachers’ own schools rather than in simulated off-site centres.
NTI serves as the Coordinating Secretariat to deliver the programme through existing mandate institutions, rather than through a parallel project unit.
In preparation for the take-off of the programmes, the academic track has been substantially completed. The curriculum frameworks for both routes have been reviewed, validated and finalised, and module development has been carried out by a national panel of approximately forty content experts drawn from universities, colleges of education and the mandate agencies: NTI, TRCN, NSSEC, UBEC and the NERDC.
In addition, the programme architecture has been mapped across the federal, state and local tiers. The remaining scope covers the digital curriculum delivery flow, the teaching practice component, and engagement with partner institutions.
On content delivery, the approach is blended by necessity, combining virtual and physical components; rather than by preference. The design places four components in a repeating cycle across each module, to ensure that no teacher progresses on the strength of digitaltechnology alone.
Specifically, NTI being the Secretariat, will coordinate curriculum, content management and quality assurance of deliverables with collaboration with UBEC and the Steering Committee.
The ATPP is a six-month programme that comprises four months of intensive instruction and a two-month teaching practice component.
The teaching practice component is most likely to determine whether the pathway produces a change in the classroom or merely a change in paperwork.
Its design rests on three requirements: a structured practicum, a mentor and supervisor protocol, and documented evidence of practice lessons, pupils’ artifacts and work, and supervisor sign-offs, all held against the candidate’s records.
The training provides a credible, affordable and time-bound route through which serving teachers without teaching qualifications can obtain TRCN-recognised professional qualifications.
The media communication strategy for the training was deliberated by the Sub-Committee on Media and Communication that was headed by the Executive Secretary of the National Secondary School Education Commission, Dr. Iyela Ajayi. NTI was represented by Mal.Yusha’u Ahmed, Head, Public Relations and Protocol. The training, which is expected to engage 250,000 Nigerian teachers, will be launched in October, 2026.
