GES to Implement Policy of Hiring and Firing of Teachers

The Ghana Education Service (GES) would soon implement a policy of entering into contracts with teachers which would allow the (GES) to monitor their performance over a period of time and those found not to be delivering would have their deals terminated. This is to bring discipline and sanity into the teaching profession and ensure that those who were not committed were weeded out of the system to ensure effective teaching and learning in schools. Madam Elizabeth De-Souza, Northern Regional Director of Education announced this in a speech read for her by Mr Dramani Dari, Regional Coordinator of NGOs and Basic Education at a stake holder’s education forum, It was organized by the Alliance for Change in Education (ACE), (under the auspices of Ibis) in collaboration with the district directorate of education in Gushegu on Tuesday. The forum, which brought together stakeholders in education, chiefs, and opinion leaders, was to enable the participants to brainstorm and come out with measures that would address the declining standards of education in the district over the years. Madam De-Souza said a monitoring team sent by the regional directorate to monitor schools in some of the districts in the region, especially the Gushegu district, revealed that, majority of the teachers were either constantly absent from school, did not write lesson notes, were drunk or were poorly dressed. She said the situation was compounded by the lack of effective supervision and monitoring in schools because the circuit supervisors did not do their jobs and blamed it on the lack of fuel to travel around the schools, while at the same time they could be seen sitting under trees playing draughts and cards. She said it was regrettable to note that majority of the teachers who showed such lackadaisical attitude to work were the trained teachers and those who were natives of the place. Madam De-Souza said “it was interesting to note that even some parents and communities had observed this and were therefore unwilling to send their children to some schools which they said would retard the performance of their wards because the teachers were seen as lazy". She said a particular case in point was that of the refusal of parents to move their children from a community “wing school” established by the ACE in Gbalga in the Karaga district to a public school in Tanyili, because they underrated the performance of the trained teachers in the public school. She said pupils in the “wing schools’ performed better than those in the public schools and cited an example where pupils in class four in the public school could not read the first chapter of their reading book although they are supposed to be entering class five next academic year. Mr Kavaarpuo Eric, ACE Project Coordinator, said although ACE had since 2007 provided over 2.5 million Euros to transform the educational sector in the Gushegu and Karaga districts, recent assessments shows that the policies were not properly carried out. He said ACE was therefore working to secure a second funding to extend the project from 2011 to 2013 to ensure that policies would be effectively implemented to bring a complete change in the status of education in the Gushegu district.