GES directs heads of schools to ensure the safety of students amid strike

The Ghana Education Service has directed the heads of public kindergartens and primary schools, as well as junior and senior high schools, to move in to ensure that students at the pre-tertiary levels in the country are kept safe. This is in the absence of teachers at the pre-tertiary levels after the three teacher unions declared a withdrawal of their services effective Friday, November 4, 2022. The teacher unions withdrew their services in protest of the appointment of Dr. Eric Nkansah as the Director General of the GES. The President of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Rev. Isaac Owusu, said in an earlier press conference that it was doing so in protest of the fact that the new GES boss was a banker. “It is unacceptable for a banker to be appointed as a Director-General of the Ghana Education Service instead of an educationist at the same time when many teachers who did the same courses and related ones were rejected by GES because it is not related to education “We stated that both the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service should apologize to teachers for accepting the very qualifications they rejected when teachers presented them…We have been compelled under the current circumstances to publicly communicate to Ghanaians our intention to go on strike, having reached the November 4 deadline we gave the government. Consequently, we have decided to embark on strike from today, Friday, November 4, 2022. By this, we are informing the general public that we are withdrawing all our services in all the pre-tertiary institutions,” he said. But the GES has called on the heads of the institutions to take over the safety of students who have been affected by this strike. “Management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has read from the media that the three (3) Teacher Unions in the Pre-tertiary Education sector have declared withdrawal of their services effective Friday, November 4, 2022. “Heads of public kindergarten and Primary Schools as well as Junior and Senior High Schools have been directed through the Regional and District Directors to mobilise their management teams to ensure the safety and well-being of all students in schools,” the statement, signed by Cassandra Twum Ampofo, Head of Public Relations, said. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo appointed Dr. Eric Nkansah to act as the new director general of the Ghana Education Service on Wednesday, October 19, 2022. The appointment, according to a statement signed by Secretary of the President, Nana Bediatuo Asante, aligns with Section 19 (1), (2) (a) and (b) of the Pre-Tertiary Education Act, 2020 (Act 1049). See the GES statement below: AE/BOG