An Educational analyst, Mr. Owusu Andrews, has served notice to Ghana Education Service to rescind its decision of increasing the contact hours of teachers in the country.
He explained that there is a reason the existing contact hours are pegged at six (6) hours for teachers, and any attempt to alter that could be detrimental to both the teachers and overall, the students.
Mr. Owusu Andrews explained the differences between what a contact hour is, and what the overall working hours for teachers are, as well as why they must not be changed.
“We have contact hours and we have working hours. The contact hours is the period within which the teacher will engage the students and once you are in the classroom, you don’t mark. That is what we call the contact hours and it is six hours – you are with the students for six hours, and you make sure you take care of them, you ensure they are on track, you facilitate the teaching and learning for that period; whatever thing that must be taught within the six hours, you do so”, he expressed.
He also lamented the attempts to make such reform in the Education system would even worsen the challenges in our education system, stating that there is no need such a thing should be done.
Besides, he added, such a new decision will psychologically affect the students and cause a lot of chaos for both the teaching practice and the impact they are expected to make in the lives of their students.
“Ask a psychologist; children have very short span of memory. It gets to a time, they become tired and you are asking one person to hold them for. And so, in my collective agreement, I urge the GES to call the teacher unions to share ideas that can help better development of our Education services,” he stated.
He added that, as a specialist in Education, he can see the country’s Education service is gradually loosing its interest of development and as a matter of urgent needs better reforms to amend the messes in the Education Service.
