The Ghana Education Service (GES) on Monday said Regional Managers of Unit/Mission schools could no longer select and post newly qualified teachers for their schools because of the government’s new salary payment system.
However, they can shift a teacher from one school to another in the same district but sending the teacher to another district would create a salary payment problem.
Mr Stephen Adu, the Director for Basic Education, was speaking to the GNA in a follow up to its Friday report from Ho that heads of Unit/Mission Schools were protesting over their denial of the quota that allowed them to select newly qualified teachers.
Previously, the GES allowed the Regional Managers of Unit/Mission schools to also declare their number of vacancies and were permitted a quota to select newly qualified teachers for posting to their schools.
The GNA story said a rumpus was raging between Basic School Unit Heads and officials at the Volta Regional Education Directorate over the posting of newly trained teachers.
The Unit heads said their responsibilities of postings and transfers had been taken from them without notice while the GES said the new move was to rationalise the posting procedure for “equity”.
But Adu said the Finance Ministry and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department had created cost centres at the district levels where district education directors would be responsible for certification for the payment of salaries of teachers at the end of each month.
He said the GES posted new teachers to district assembly schools based on the number of vacancies declared by the head teachers and added that the Upper East, Upper West, Northern and Volta Regions are facing teacher shortages, while the other six regions of the country are having excess teachers but with some few districts under staffed.
Mr Adu said under the GES staff rationalization system, teachers were being shifted at the regional levels, alongside the posting of new teachers, hence regions with excess staff might not benefit from the postings of newly trained teachers.
He said that at the end of July, the list of new teachers who would not be posted in the regions with excess staff would be forwarded to the GES headquarters for redistribution to the other regions.
