It’s cruel and unfair to reject teachers because they failed a 3 hour licensure exam - Opoku-Agyemang

The running mate for the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang has reiterated that the issue of standardization which brought about the teacher licensure exams was not well thought out before being implemented by the current administration

She remarked “The teacher licensure exam I think it’s Act 778, this act was passed in 2008 when Naana Opoku Agyemang was nowhere near the Ministry of Education. Neither was President Mahama anywhere near the presidency.

“There were three arms to it, the NaCCA, the National Inspectorate Board and the National Teaching Council. So one of the questions I ask myself is that why do we have the National Inspectorate Board at the GES and we’ve added this licensure it. So we studied it a bit and the argument about this licensure is that UCC does education, so is the case of Winneba and some private institutions so there is no standard.”

She bemoaned the aspects of the policy which makes it impossible for an individual to teach in Ghana without a license even though that person might have gone through a 3 or 4 year programme of study at the tertiary level.

“So after going through a 3 or 4 year course depending on the course of study and passing all your exams then you are presented with your certificate only to be told that there is another exam which if you don’t pass then you can’t teach in Ghana, then I think it’s unfair.”

Speaking during her recent campaign tour of the Central Region covered by MyNewsGh.com, Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyemang who is also the former Vice-Chancellor of UCC said her understanding of licensure is not a 3-hour sit-down exams without any formalized guidelines.

She continued “I think this is a simple matter because our program of study at the tertiary level are internally approved by the academic board together with the National Council for Tertiary Education which I have once served as a member of the academic board.

“We approved their rigorous form of examination so there are ways to standardize it. So when I got the idea of licensure it wasn’t a 3-hour sit-down exams. I never thought that was the ideal solution. I don’t think so because it’s a practical profession in the long run,” she told Benjamin Tetteh Nartey on GBC’s Radio Central monitored by MyNewsGh.com