GES to post some 3,600 teachers

Accra, July 6, GNA 96 About 3,600 teachers returning from study leave after tertiary education, with or without pay are expected to be posted to the classrooms at the beginning of the next academic year, a Senior Official of the Ghana Education Service (GES) said on Thursday. Mr Samuel Bannerman-Mensah, Deputy Director General Quality and Access, told a workshop in Accra on posting of GES personnel returning from study leave that some 8,128 vacancies were available for teachers at the second cycle level, saying the figures showed a serious imbalance between demand and supply ratio at that level.

He said usually GES ensured that teachers returning from study leave were equitably distributed to the regions through a regional allocation exercise.

'The demand for teachers continues to remain high as compared to what we supply annually,' he said.

He said guidelines had been developed to facilitate the distribution process and urged the participants to strictly adhere to them. Mr Bannerman-Mensah said the participants should be more particular about teachers, who studied "critical=94 subjects such as English, Mathematics, Science and French as they were always in short supply. He said vacancies in the second cycle institutions should be filled first before the basic level and graduates, who majored in Education, must be first allocated to the training colleges. He said at least 50 per cent of the district allocation was to be posted to deprived schools.

Mr Bannerman-Mensah said the Human Resource and Management Division had ensured that each region got its fair share of these categories of teachers.

'Please ensure that these teachers are posted mainly to teach the subjects in which they have been trained; additional subjects must be supplementary to the specific ones.'

He appealed to the regional offices not to take on teachers, who had not been allocated to their regions from the Headquarters so that the problem of inequity in distribution of teachers within the Service could be addressed.

Mr Bannerman-Mensah said it was necessary to monitor personnel of the Service, who were on study leave, so as to have accurate records on them and ensure that they were reading the subjects for which they were granted study leave.

He said all teachers on study leave should be made to sign bonds to serve the GES adding that Regional Directors, District Directors and other officers from the regions, who monitored the teachers, should ensure that continuing students, who were on payrolls, signed such bonds.

A tracking system is being put in place to track all study leave beneficiaries, who refused postings and left the Service to other organisations.

Meanwhile a statement on the teacher demand and shortage in some subject areas as at June 14, 2006 indicated that the national request for teachers in Mathematic was 808 but only 196 was recorded. The request in English Language was 859 but there were only 165 teachers. Mrs Nancy Opoku, Director Human Resource and Management Division of GES, said the workshop was to ensure that teachers got to know their regions to which they had been allocated and if possible the schools to which they had been posted so as to be at post by September 2006. 6 July 06