Teachers must be part of school reforms

12-09-09

A FORMER General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mr Paul Osei-Mensah, has underscored the need for teachers to be actively involved in the formulation of policies on education.
That, he said, would ensure a better implementation of such policies since they would have had a perfect understanding of the policies.
“Teachers should not see themselves as mere implementers of ideologies of others, but should be part of the process of reforms, through their professional bodies”, he said at the third Quadrennial Delegates Conference of the Greater Accra Regional GNAT in Accra.
It was held on the theme: “The Role of The Teacher in The New Education Reform”.
Mr Osei-Mensah underscored the need for bodies such as the Ghana Education Service (GES) Council, the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE), Council for Technical and Vocational Education (COTVET) and the councils of the various universities and polytechnics to determine the curricula and duration of courses at those levels.
The problem the country had, he said, was that “we do not allow national institutions to perform their statutory duties”, adding that policies such as free textbooks, Capitation Grant and free school uniforms should be modified to allow only the poor to benefit.
According to him, “there should be positive discrimination in favour of the poor.
Mr Osei-Mensah, who is also a member of the National Labour Commission (NLC), said the government should rank teachers among the list of its top public servants and reward them adequately, and that they (teachers) should be provided with certain basic educational inputs to be able to perform.
The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Nii Armah Ashietey, who opened the conference, said motivating teachers was the key to improving the quality, accessibility and relevance of education.
“The government is committed to investing in people and I can assure you that teachers would be given the needed motivation to enable them to play their defined roles towards attainment of this goal,” he said.
He stressed the need for teachers to operate within a peaceful industrial climate and choose dialogue to settle industrial disputes instead of resorting to strikes which would create unnecessary tension.
Nii Ashiety said the government would continue to collaborate with district assemblies to upgrade basic school infrastructure throughout the country.
He called on parents not to shirk their responsibilities so that together “we can have a holistic development of the child in a congenial atmosphere of partnership and solidarity”.