Prof. Opoku-Agyemeng urges adequate motivation of teachers

Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, Minister Designate for Education, has emphasized the need for the State to adequately motivate teachers, who accepted postings to rural arrears, to bridge the educational deficit between urban and rural Ghana.

Agreeing that a lot was being done to improve the lot of teachers, she maintained that more incentives like accommodation, transport and scholarships for further education should be provided to get more teachers to stay in outlandish areas where education is minimal.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang was answering questions posed by Members of the Appointments Committee of Parliament on measures she proffered to get more teachers posted to rural areas when she appeared for vetting on Thursday.

She asserted that when teachers were sufficiently inspired and resourced, it promoted efficiency and effectiveness in output, which in turn improved the general quality of education.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said she would pursue interventions that would improve the teaching and learning of science and maths from the basic to tertiary level, to conform with the President’s vision of accelerating development of Ghana through the application of science and technology.

She said the country’s educational needs, particularly at the tertiary level, should respond to national needs, placing emphasis on the training of teachers to properly teach science and maths at the basic level to encourage more science learning.

The Minister-designate, who also commented on the usual delay in paying the salaries of newly employed teachers, said the situation was unfortunate but manageable, and that when given the nod she would seek stakeholder consultations to address that challenge.

She advocated the raising of the status of public schools to the levels of private schools to equalise standards of education because most people could only afford public schools.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang expressed regret at the phenomenon of adolescent girls getting pregnant while in school and advised girls to delay parenthood.

She advocated for the need for reproductive health education by both parents and teachers to mitigate the incidence of teenage pregnancy and suggested that students who wanted to return to school after child birth should be given the opportunity to do so but in another school to avoid stigmatisation.

On the issue of students trading sex for grade, the minister designate condemned the matter, arguing that such incident undermined professional competence and integrity.

She urged female students to believe in their competence and to put in more efforts to make their grade because “it is easy to pass at the university”.

Answering a question on canning in schools that had led to parents attacking teachers, Prof Opoku-Agyemang described corporal punishment as a “brutal and barbaric act that should not be prescribed in schools.

She said sanctions must be coded with stakeholders being made aware of what sanctions were in place for braking of school rules and that children must not be made to drop from school because of punishment from teachers.

When the Minister-designate for Communications, Dr Edward Kofi Omane-Boamah took his turn at the committee, he said, there was the need to strengthen the collaboration between the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the National Media Commission (NMC) to forestall disagreements that arose as to which of the two bodies should issue and deal with matters relating to radio and television frequencies.

He said the NCA possessed the technical competence to deal with issues concerning the allocation of frequencies and that there was the need to strengthen cooperation between stakeholders to obviate dissent on the issue.

Dr Omane-Boamah said he would strengthen the system of assessment put in place by the NCA, which includes fines, commendations and condemnations, to address the problem of poor service delivery by the telecommunication companies.

He said he would promote the domestic system of "roaming" which would enable subscribers to switch from a network which has poor frequency signals to another in any locality to enhance mobile telephony in Ghana.

Asked how he would improve the operations of the Ghana Post Company, the Minister-designate said he would pursue a regime that would enhance the establishments’ money transfer and parcel delivery services that could increase its fortunes because the company had a very wide reach.

He said he would make sure that Ghanaian investors in the telecommunication sector were encourage and protected to promote local content in the industry.