23,000 teaching vacancies at basic education level

Accra, May 17, GNA - The Ghana Education Service (GES) on Thursday said there were 22,988 teaching vacancies at the basic education level for this year.

"Teacher training colleges, which are the main sources of teacher supply for this level of education, will graduate only 8,321 teachers this year."

There are 38 training colleges in the country. Mrs Benedicta Naana Biney, Deputy Director General, GES made this known at a three-day workshop on postings for the newly trained post secondary teachers at Ajumako in the Central Region.

Participants drawn from the 10 regions were mainly Assistant Directors of Education in charge of Posting. Participants are expected to ensure equitable allocation of trainee teachers in the 10 regions. The Deputy Director General said the vacancies were created as a result of retirements, deaths, approval of study leave and withdrawal from the school system.

Mrs Biney noted that the total demand for teachers over the years had remained very high in relation to supply adding there were serious imbalances between teachers demand and supply. Giving a breakdown on the trainee teachers' categories produced, Mrs Biney said 7,180 are for general studies, 895 for technical skills and 246 for French.

The Deputy Director General said to ensure equity in teacher allocation to the regions and placement in schools in all the districts; the human resource division had developed guidelines for the exercise. She expressed concern about the pupil to teacher ratio saying while some were low; others had 90:1 indicating that, it was higher than national pupil teacher ratios

This, the Deputy Director attributed to over enrolment. She said a regional posting meeting would be held in May this year to enable the regions to publish teacher allocations and communicate results to all teacher-training colleges by the middle of June. Mrs Biney called for an efficient management of state resources adding, "we simply cannot afford to let some of our teachers trained with our meagre resources, 'go fallow' while some schools in deprived areas do not have teachers."

She charged participants to take the workshop seriously so that they could understand policies and staffing norms of the GES. Mrs Janet Alemna, Assistant Director, head of Posting and Transfer Unit, GES who gave out guidelines for posting noted that newly trained teachers who were posted to rural areas were often exposed to social hazards.

She suggested that teacher trainees should be posted in pairs to deprived areas and further appealed to the GES to work out teacher motivation packages for teachers posted to deprived districts. Mrs Alemna said due to the capitation grant, there had been an increase in enrolment indicating that retired teachers would be recruited according to guidelines provided.

She called on district directors and the district assemblies to publicize their districts in order to make them attractive to teachers. Mrs Alemna said teachers who refused postings by the end of October, would be treated as having vacated their post and sanctioned. Some of the sanctions she said included making teacher to serve five years before qualifying for further studies. Mrs Nancy H Opoku Acting Director, Human Resource Management Division in a speech read for her said regional and district allocation had been an issue of great importance to the service because of its unique role in strengthening GES staff. She stressed the need for participants to work hard so that the myth and frustration associated with postings of newly trained teachers would be salvaged. Ms Hienne Obeng, Resident Director of the GES Development Institute, who chaired the workshop urged the directors to seek the welfare of teachers after their postings to know problems confronting them. 17 May 07