20% allowance offer for rural based teachers

Accra, July 6, GNA- The Minister of Education, Mrs Betty Mould Iddrisu, on Wednesday told Parliament that government would implement the 20 per cent allowance for teachers in the rural areas this year.

"The ministry has identified the unwillingness of the teachers to accept postings to deprived districts as constituting serious impediment to quality education delivery," she said.

The problem however was how to identify and define schools and the teachers who qualify for the package.

She stated she was in a discussion with the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning to identify funding sources that would enable this incentive to be implemented.

She was speaking on the floor of Parliament at question time. She said the ministry was making efforts to construct additional teachers' accommodation to motivate the teachers to accept posting in the deprive areas.

"The ministry is also formulating Teachers Housing Policy to help teachers acquire housing units across the country," she said, adding, a vehicle acquisition policy is almost completed to facilitate the acquisition of motorbikes and cars especially for those in the rural areas.

She said several interventions had been made to address the shortage of teachers in Ghana both in the short and long terms.

According to the minister, the 9000 teachers that were churned out yearly from the teacher training colleges would be posted to basic schools, a measure that aims at revamping rural schools.

The Untrained Teacher Training Programme had been also been introduced.

She said the programme was an alternative route to train more pupil teachers who were already based in the rural areas indicating that so far about 21,000 of such teachers had been trained and were teaching in rural schools as qualified teachers,

The minister explained that 5000 of these trainees would complete the programme in December 2011.

Mrs Iddrisu said a committee had been set up to address the challenges faced by teachers concerning the delays in the payment of their salary arrears and added that the Accountant General had introduced a system in which teachers across the country would be place on separate server solely responsible for teachers salary.

Reacting to a question on distance learning, Mrs Iddrisu said government had established the Centre for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS) under the Ministry of Education to harmonise and regulate distance learning in Ghana.

She noted that CENDLOS had developed two major documents that would ensure that distance Education Programmes in the public Universities were harmonized and properly regulated.

These documents, she said, would soon form the basis for a national legal framework governing distance education in the country. Concerning the establishment of vocational schools in Ghana, the minister reiterated government resolve to establish in each district a vocational institute to promote Technical and Vocational Training.