Best teacher award winner cries foul

Ejisu (Ash), Sept. 8, GNA - A Best Teacher Award winner, Mr Philip Baidoo who was denied his prize by the Nkoranza District Directorate of Education has petitioned the Ghana Education Service (GES) against what he sees ''as cheating and unfair treatment.''

He is demanding an independent probe into the matter.

Mr Baidoo, a former teacher at the Nkoranza Local Authority Junior Secondary School (JSS), won the first prize in the Basic Science Division in this year's awards and should have carried home a 21-inch coloured television set.

He was stripped of the prize because he no longer teaches in the District.

Mr Baidoo told the Ghana News Agency at Ejisu where he is on transfer that he found the decision of the Nkoranza District Directorate of Education "quite strange and completely untenable".

"The Directorate is acting in bad faith and showing double standards," he said and cited an instance where one Mr Owusu Bempa, a citizen of Nkoranza, who won a best teacher award and was on similar transfer outside the District, received his prize.

Mr Baidoo showed to the GNA copies of correspondence between the National Co-ordinator of the Best Teacher Award Scheme and the Nkoranza District Director of Education on the matter.

In the Co-ordinator's letter dated on May 7 and signed by Mrs Elizabeth J. Sowah, the District Director, it said the scheme was set up to raise morale and motivate teachers to give of their best. She said that since Mr Baidoo is still with the GES his being on transfer "does not render him ineligible to receive an award he rightly won while working in the District".

Mr J.K. Agyeman, Director, said after deliberations they felt it would be a bad precedent that could lead the District Assembly to withdraw its support for the scheme if Mr Baidoo were presented with the prize.