GES posts teachers to deprived areas

Page 20

9-03-09

A policy to ensure that deprived areas are not left out in teacher distribution in the country has taken off with new teachers being posted to the deprived parts of the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies that sponsored them.
The first batch of teachers under the policy has been sent to their various districts.
The Director of the Teacher Education Division of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Mr Victor Mante, who made this known to the Daily Graphic, said the assemblies were expected to provide the needed facilities to ensure that the teachers served in the deprived parts of the assemblies.
An exercise carried out by the Teacher Education Division of the Ghana Education Service (GES) revealed that there were 6,000 untrained teachers in 70 of the 170 districts of the country.
The decision to post teachers to deprived communities aims at addressing the problem of lack of teachers in deprived communities.
Mr Mante said more than 97 per cent of teacher trainees were sponsored by their metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies.
He said it was, therefore, incumbent upon the local GES to post the teachers to the deprived areas of the districts that sponsored them, since that was where their services were needed most.
He said the new measures, which had taken effect from the 2008/2009 academic year, was being implemented, and stressed that "more districts should sponsor teacher trainees, since that is the only way they can address their vacancy problem".
Mr Mante said district assemblies needed to undertake the needs assessment of teachers every year to project the number of teachers they would need to plan towards their sponsorship.
On the admission of teacher trainees annually, he said the current quota was 9000, and that although Principals of Colleges of Education had indicated their preparedness to take up to 12,000 trainees, that could not be done because of the cost involved in terms of the payment of allowances.
For instance, GH¢26,255,500 was spent as allowances for teacher trainees last year, and that about GH¢900,000 more would be needed if the intake was increased to 12,000.
Mr Mante said out of the 9000 admitted every year, 8,200 graduated, saying that while others dropped out midstream the rest were referred in their subjects.