CLASSROOMS WITHOUT TEACHERS (JULY 9, 2010)

THE disclosure by the Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, that the Ghana Education Service (GES) can provide only 8,625 teachers out of the 33,185 vacancies that have been declared for 2010 is really worrying, to say the least.
The minister, who was answering a question in Parliament concerning the measures his ministry was putting in place to ensure the adequate supply of qualified teachers for schools in the rural areas in particular, noted that the problem facing the ministry was that the number of teacher vacancies declared every year far outstripped the number of newly trained teachers who passed out from the colleges of education and teachers returning from further studies.
If we understand the minister well, what he said means that the problem has been recurring over the years; maybe starting with just a few vacancies until it has snowballed into a very serious national predicament which must be tackled with great tact and zeal.
The questions to be asked are: Why did we allow the problem to grow out of hand? What has been done over the years to get it resolved? How do we, as a nation, resolve this matter once and for all so that the problem of classrooms without teachers would be a thing of the past?
The DAILY GRAPHIC is worried about the implications of having pupils in classrooms without teachers to attend to them. Many a wayward pupil can easily take advantage of the situation to get themselves into trouble, in addition to influencing others negatively.
Government policies over the years, especially the capitation grant, the school feeding programme, the supply of exercise books to pupils and the distribution of free school uniforms to pupils in deprived communities, are all geared towards motivating children to go to school and remain there until they finish.
To all intents and purposes, that objective has been achieved, with statistics indicating that school enrolment has gone up over the past few years.
Thus it is ironic that at a time when the state is stretching every sinew to get children in school, there seems to be no teachers in the classrooms to teach them.
We believe strongly that one of the causes of this state of affairs is the high attrition rate in the educational sector, which in turn can be traced to the rather poor conditions of service for our teachers.
In short, one cannot find any other sector where the workers quit in droves to join other sectors than the educational sector.
The DAILY GRAPHIC suggests that as a first step towards resolving the matter, efforts must be made to retain those teachers who are at post, so that they don’t leave to create more vacancies.
It is our hope that the Single Spine Pay Policy which was recently introduced will satisfy teachers and keep them in the classrooms. If it succeeds in doing this, the policy will surely entice those who left the service to return and motivate others to join the service. The introduction of a professional allowance for teachers should also help to stem the high attrition rate in the classrooms.
We also revisit the suggestion that was made some time ago that metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies should be able to sponsor students to the colleges of education, after which they can bond the trainee teachers to serve in schools in communities where they are needed.
By extension, even traditional authorities, individuals and corporate entities such as mining companies could get on board this sponsorship train, all in the effort to get teachers in our classrooms all over the country.
Education is the bedrock of any meaningful development and the teacher is the centrepiece of that rock. Therefore, we must do everything within our means to get them into our classrooms and, more importantly, retain them there for as long as possible.