Ghanaian Times: Set targets for teachers

Both professional and non-professional teachers are going to be paid a continuous Professional Development Allowance (CPDA) with effect from this month (November 2020).

The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, disclosing this to our reporter, said more than 301,000 teachers across the country were the beneficiaries.

He explained that professional teachers would be paid a net of GH¢1,200 while the non-professional teachers would receive GH¢800 (Kindly read the story on the front page).

The CPDA is meant to help teachers pay fees for further studies and also buy books for courses or self-education to upgrade themselves.

The Ghanaian Times hopes more incentives would be given to teachers to motivate them to put in their best to ensure they offer their pupils/students the best standard of education.

The success of every country’s formal educational system to meet the needs and aspirations of society depends on the quality of teachers, which has to do with their appreciable level of knowledge and best attitude towards teaching.

The good teacher is the one who upgrades himself/herself in order to be abreast of the current knowledge and skills, and the best methods to adopt to impart this knowledge and skills.

Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a Turkish Field Marshal, statesman, and author, sums this up in the saying “A good teacher is like a candle; it consumes itself to light the way for others.”

The Ghanaian Times congratulates the beneficiary teachers on winning the fight for this allowance. We also commend the government for seeing the need to give teachers such an allowance. No teacher can contest the fact that the standard of education in the country has fallen beyond everyone’s imagination, and one of the causes of this is the teacher’s poor attitude towards teaching and learning.

Some teachers do not prepare before going to the classroom; others adopt poor teaching methods whereas a good number of them have not upgraded themselves since they left school.

There are teachers who choose to go to school late and also on the day they wish to do so. Some leave school earlier than they should. Some too go to the classroom all right but go there to while away the time to the disadvantage of their pupils and students.

These poor attitudes must stop for the better so that Ghana can be counted among countries that have education systems that are reliable to meet the needs and aspirations of their societies.

One of the expectations of education is a good language, both spoken and written, and this is a huge problem in Ghana. Teachers themselves should master the English language and some local languages so they can teach our children, who are the leaders of tomorrow.

The Ghanaian Times wishes to prompt the GES that the norm now is that employers give employees targets to meet, to merit their wages and allowances.

Therefore, it would not be out of place to give teachers targets for them to abandon the poor attitudes they show towards teaching. For instance, it should be the target/standard for teachers to ensure that the poorest brain in their class scores at least 50 percent in the relevant subjects even when examined by external examiners.

The Ghanaian Times believes with the right policies in place and appreciable attitudes from our teachers, our education standard would improve.

And the improvement in educational standards can be good grounds for teachers to ask for more allowances.