The Registrar for National Teaching Council (NTC), Dr. Christian Addai-Poku, has said there are about 30% of teachers in Ghana who are not qualify to teach in the classroom and out of this about 14,000 are currently working with the Ghana Education Service (GES).
Dr. Addai-Poku made this statement during the launch of Private School Teacher Continuous Professional Development (PST-CPD), where he said the council is mandated to ensure that by the close of this year, only teachers with the requisite skills and qualification are allowed to teach in schools.
He explained that the unqualified teachers include graduates from the Junior High School, Senior High Schools and Universities.
Dr. Addai-Poku added that the programme is sponsored by the Ministry Finance, the National Teaching Council and other stakeholders who partnered with Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNACOPS) through the Obaatanpa Care Programme to train at least 2000 private school teachers as part of government effort to license all teachers in the country.
He said the programme forms the basis of training unqualified teachers to equip them with the best practices on how to teach literacy and numeracy and also in-depth knowledge of professional practice and conduct.
In all, about 2000 unqualified teachers are going to benefit and issued with a temporary license which will qualify the private school teachers to be in the classroom whiles they wait for the processes leading to obtaining a full license.
“Over the year, our education system has leveraged the readiness and availability of non-professional teachers to deliver education in the country and the government is working hard to close the gap of qualified teachers in both private and public school,” he stated.
He said as at now, there are about 70% of private school teachers who are not professional.
The registrar said the programme is to equip and train 48 master trainers who will move across the country and train private school teachers to acquire the basic skills that will help them to efficiently handle their classes.
“It is important to note that this training as important as it is does not guarantee participants the licence to teach and it is NTC’s requirement that all in-service teachers in both private and public schools undertake parodic training to ensure quality delivery of lessons to learners.”
“It requires that teachers both private or public schools undergo continuing professional development programmes to update their knowledge and skills to confirm to the changing body of knowledge and skills, curricula and new policies in education,” he stated.
He added that NTC is not interested in laying off unqualify teachers but rather intends to undertake programmes and initiatives aimed at ensuring that the Ghanaian teacher attain the highest professional status.
However, those who are unable to position themselves like taking advantage of what GNACOPS is doing will have to find their way out of the system.
He added that NTC will ensure that about 70% of teachers in all private schools who are unqualified have the requisite teacher training certificate and license to practice as teachers. This mean that all unqualify teachers will have to as a matter of urgency start taking steps to upgrade themselves and become qualify.
“I will urge all qualified teachers, especially in all the private schools to apply for the teachers licence currently going on throughout the country to do so because by law, it is the only authorisation to teach currently in Ghana.”
Dr. Addai-Poku said as part of the requirement for the ensure private teachers are trained, NTC has introduced entrance exams to ensure that “we get it right from the start. We need the right people to be trained as teachers so that when they can come out, we are sure that most of them will meet our fitness to teach test.”
Speaking at the launch, the Executive Director of GNACOPS, Mr. Enoch Kwasi Gyetuah said the four days training will be done for 48 master trainers of private school teachers who intend training 2000 teachers nationwide and issued with temporary license in addition to plans in place to liaise with the University of Education Winneba to offer courses leading to acquiring full teacher license.
He said the facilitators who will be giving tuition to the master trainers are drawn from University of Cape Coast and from all teacher training colleges across the country and used the occasion to thank NTC for their continuous support of ensuring that private education in Ghana take a shape.
Mr. Gyetuah said the ongoing PST-CPD is not going to target only teachers but also look at positioning school proprietors, adding that after the four days of intensive training, the master trainers would be sent out to train all private school teachers who want to upgrade and remaining in the classroom.
