Quality public education is non-negotiable - GNAT

Wa, July 26, GNA - Mr John Nyoagbe, Deputy General Secretary of Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has noted that the provision of quality public education for children in Ghana is non-negotiable.

He urged government to regularly make resource allocations available to schools since reliance on profit oriented companies or the private sector to deliver educational was unreliable. Mr Nyoagbe said this at the end of an in-service training workshop for 183 teachers from the Upper West and Upper East Regions in Wa on Friday organised by GNAT and the Canadian Teachers Federation (GNAT/CTF). The forum helped deepened the teachers' knowledge and understanding of subject contents, leadership and administrative skills.

"Recognising that education is a fundamental human right and a public good and also the realization of the need to create equality of opportunity for Ghanaian children, was what informed government to sign the Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals in 2000", Mr Nyoagbe said.

Mr Nyoagbe said teachers were pivotal to the effective delivery of educational services and noted that it was for that reason GNAT invested substantial part of its revenue in various teachers professional development programmes. Mr Nyoagbe expressed unhappiness that education sector's budget was cut down while in urban and countryside communities there were schools without teachers, low teacher morale and weak motivation, inadequate pay, poor condition of service and weak support systems. He said there were equally poor infrastructure classrooms without roofs, under equipped and overcrowded schools as well as inadequate basic facilities such as portable water, toilets and electricity in many schools in the country.

Mr. Mahmud Khalid, Upper West Regional Minister urged the teachers to put much premium in the teaching of science, mathematics and computer science in schools.

He urged them to motivate and create the much needed interest in students to pursue science and mathematics as a course of study while teachers also upgraded their knowledge, skills and teaching methodologies through in-service training for improve performance. Mr Khalid appealed to people in the Upper West and Upper East Regions to take education seriously because with it, they would be able to overcome poverty, disease and hunger. He said the teaching of French should also be intensified. The Course Prefect, Margaret L. Akparibo appealed to GNAT/CTF to rotate the venue of the training to benefit more teachers. 26 July 09