GES boosts teacher postings to remote areas

Tamale, Oct 5, GNA - The Ghana Education Service (GES) will ensure that 80 percent of teachers returning from study leave and the newly trained are posted to "under-services" communities, President John Agyekum Kufuor has said.

In a speech read for him at this year's National Best Teacher Awards at Tamale on Friday, President Kufuor said the GES was also liasing with the National Service Secretariat for the deployment of the majority of Service persons allocated to the Education sector to "under-serviced" areas.

The celebration was on the theme: "Quality education: Teacher participation in the new education reform". President Kufuor said by this approach, the government hoped to address the challenges of equity and access to education so that children in remote communities were not unduly disadvantaged. He noted that the weakest link in the delivery of education in the public sector was supervision and said it was to address this that vehicles and motorbikes had been supplied to the district and regional directorates of education.

In the last three weeks, a total of 110 double-cabin pickups and 45 station wagon vehicles had been distributed to regional and district directors of Education, as well as heads of all teacher training colleges to facilitate monitoring and supervision.

President Kufuor said each district had also received between two and four motorbikes for circuit supervisors and bicycles to needy teachers who had to commute over long distances to and from school. He said 1,358 motorbikes had also been provided to teachers on hire purchase under a five-year no interest scheme.

Mr Joseph Kwaku Adjei, National President of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), warned that the new education reforms stood the danger of failing due to lack of the required infrastructure, manpower and other vital resources.

He called for public education to bring all stakeholders on board to discuss the reforms to ensure that adequate provisions were put in place to ensure its success.

"We do not want the situation where teachers would be accused again of being responsible for the failure in the implementation of a national programme," he reiterated.

Alhaji Mustapha Ali Idris, Northern Regional Minister, congratulated the award winners and also commend the government and the international community for their assistance to victims of the recent floods that devastated parts of the three Northern Regions. Professor John Nabila, who presided over the event, expressed worry about a growing phenomenon of students using false results to gain entry into tertiary institutions and called for measures to check it.