‘Exclude private school teachers from the teacher licensing law’-proprietors

Some private school proprietors in the country have expressed dismay at the enforcement of the teacher licensing law to include teachers in private schools revealing that the implementation will precipitate the closure of the schools and therefore want the National Teaching Council (NTC) to exclude the private schools. Their reasons include the circumstance that surrounds the employment of teachers and the level of professionalism of the teachers in the schools. In a statement made available to the media by the Registrar of the National Teaching Council (NTC), Dr. Christian Addai Opoku, he said; “Now we are moving into the licensing enforcement state and from January 2023, anybody who does not have the authorisation (license) to teach, the NCT will deal with that person because the law is clear”. The statement also indicates that teachers at public and private schools must acquire a teaching license by December 2022 to avoid prosecution by the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023). Dr. Opoku stressed that: “It would be good for proprietors to also support their teachers to be licensed else they would have to dismiss them in order not to fall foul of the law”. Speaking in an interview with some proprietors about the challenges of the Act to their schools, they explained that, most teachers teaching in private schools are Senior High School (SHS) certificate holders who may not have the resource to undertake the course to acquire the license in order not to contravene NTC’s law. According to a proprietor, “If I can’t support my teachers who do not have the financial standing to apply for the license, it implies that I would have to allow them to leave my school just to avoid being prosecuted by NTC”. “Some of these SHS students accept the teaching job in these schools just to gather money for studies at tertiary level and can resign or leave the school at any time without telling the proprietor even if they have the license,” another proprietor noted. “The enforcement of the Act will kill the private schools because if a proprietor can’t get a teacher who is licensed to teach it will mean that the proprietor will have to close down his school for the fear of prosecution,” the proprietors bemoaned. However, the proprietors referred that the law is applicable in public schools since teachers in the sector are permanent workers on a higher salary.