The Federal Government's decision to exempt Nigeria Certificate in Education (NCE) candidates from the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination is apparently aimed at unburdening the Joint Admission and Matriculation Board (JAMB) and at the same time encouraging more tertiary access to prospective teachers. But it is a policy that can culminate in lowering the quality of teachers and thereby becoming a negative development. Rather than simply removing what once tested them, the government should pursue the harder and more honest path of making teacher education attractive enough to draw in the best candidates. Access should not be mistaken for quality, or administrative convenience taken for educational reform. Government should therefore rethink the policy.
Policy Announcement and Context
At the 2026 JAMB policy meeting held on May 12, 2026, in Abuja, the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa, announced that candidates with a minimum of four O-level credit passes seeking admission into NCE programmes at Colleges of Education would no longer be required to sit the UTME. The exemption, which takes effect from the 2026/2027 academic session, is meant to widen access to teacher education and reduce pressure on the admission system. On the surface, the policy looks like a pragmatic and humane solution. However, the real truth may lie deeper.
Teacher Shortage and Quality Concerns
At the primary level alone, only 915,913 teachers currently serve about 31.8 million Nigerian pupils. This ratio — one teacher to thirty-five children — is far higher than the UNESCO-recommended ratio of one to twenty-five. Other statistics reveal that the country has a nearly 200,000-teacher deficit at the basic education level, a gap that has been widening amid declines in enrolment to teacher training institutions. Eighteen states reportedly failed to recruit a single teacher within five years, while some Colleges of Education were said to have recorded zero first-year admissions. These are the challenges the government appears to be trying to solve.
However, diseases are not cured by suppressing symptoms. In a system starved of quality educators, the answer to under-enrolment in teacher training cannot be to lower the standard of those being trained. Under-enrolment is merely a symptom, showing that for decades, chronic devaluation of the teaching profession has gnawed away at the health of the education sector.
Union Concerns
The Nigeria Union of Teachers could not have made the point as clearly as it did. At a sensitisation workshop for teachers in Abuja on May 13, 2026, National President Audu Titus Amba lamented that Colleges of Education have, in the public imagination, become the last resort of candidates who could not gain entry elsewhere. The brightest candidates are choosing universities and other tertiary institutions. After the doors have been closed, Colleges of Education are expected to “bend down and select” the remnants. Rather than reverse this trend through incentives and investment, the government has chosen, with this exemption, to formalise and accelerate it.
The UTME was not the reason Colleges of Education were held in low esteem; it was merely a threshold. Removing it changes nothing about the underlying condition; it simply ensures that candidates who could not clear even a modest bar will now fill classrooms where tomorrow’s citizens will emerge.
Contradictions in Government Policy
The government should address the contradiction in this policy. At the same policy meeting in Abuja, the minimum UTME cut-off mark for admission into universities was raised to 150, up from 140 in the 2023 cycle. This suggests that the government prioritises academic competence for university entrants. The cut-off for colleges of nursing sciences was likewise set at 150. Ironically, on the same day, in the same hall, with the same officials present, the government announced that candidates seeking to become teachers — the very people who will prepare all future university aspirants — need not sit such an examination at all. That is not a position government should be willing to defend.
What Nigeria needs are competent educators who are technologically empowered and professionally excellent. These are the kind of minds that should drive the nation’s growth and development, and prepare learners to face the modern world and its peculiar challenges. However, this will remain an illusion when the system deliberately refuses to screen its inputs.
Attrition and Performance Statistics
Nigeria’s teacher attrition rate stands at approximately eight per cent yearly. About 30 per cent of existing teachers lack adequate training. Student performance in standardised examinations has declined by 10 per cent over five years. These figures describe a profession that is already under severe strain. Adding more under-qualified entrants can only worsen the statistics.
Most troubling is the government’s rationale that the exemption will also ease pressure on the JAMB system. In 2026, 2,243,816 candidates registered for the UTME, a 10.5 per cent increase from the previous year. Managing this volume is indeed a logistical challenge. However, reducing the number of UTME candidates by allowing NCE applicants to enter without writing the exam may help officials manage admissions more easily, but it does not solve the deeper problems affecting the quality of education and teacher training. It treats teacher education as a pressure valve for JAMB’s logistical difficulties rather than as a critical national enterprise in its own right.
Recommendations for Reform
A more appropriate response would be a comprehensive review of teacher remuneration, the introduction of housing allowances, rural posting incentives, and professional development pathways that make teaching a career worth choosing. There should also be investment in the physical infrastructure of Colleges of Education, and a sustained public campaign to restore the social esteem of the teaching profession. Waiving the UTME will not achieve any of these.
The exemption of Colleges of Education from the UTME should be reversed. The Federal Government should hold a genuine and inclusive conversation with the NUT, the TRCN, the NCCE, the National Universities Commission, state governments, and civil society. The agenda of such a conference should be the urgent pursuit of a national teacher education reform, with a view to raising the quality and appeal of the teaching profession. There should be a conscious move to fill Colleges of Education with the best candidates, not the most desperate ones, and produce teachers who are prepared for the work.
