Educationist disagrees with NDC’s plan to abolish graduate teachers’ licensure examination

An Educationist with Africa Education Watch, Divine Kpe, is against the intention of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to abolish the licensure examination for graduate teachers if it captures power in the December 2020 polls.

In an interview with Univers News, the Educationist explained that the licensure examination emboldens teachers as they are carrying out their duty.

“One advantage of this licensure is that it gives more professional status to the teacher and it enhances their ability to more bargain with the government so we cannot just discount the licensure to the teachers,” he said.

He urged the NDC administration to clarify the process of rolling out such a policy of abolishing the licensure examination.

According to him, the educational system is likely to face a reduction in quality teaching if such a policy is implemented because there will exist no evaluation system to assess potential teachers.

“Probably they [NDC] will have another alternate way that teachers should go through in order to be licensed. That is why I am saying that they have to make that obvious to us. The current government has introduced a licensure exam for teachers to write before they are licensed, so if the NDC is saying they are going to take that away, then what other modalities are they going to use to licensed teachers?” he asked.

Background

The National Democratic Congress (NDC) says it has planned to abolish the mandatory national service and licensure examination for graduate teachers if given the mandate after the December 7 general elections.

The vice presidential candidate of the party, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang explained that the move intends to achieve a quality educational system in the country.

She made this known at the launch of the party’s manifesto for the 2020 polls at the University of Professional Studies, Accra, on Monday, September 7, 2020.