RE: Worry development on teacher continuous professional development among GES staff

The National Teaching Council (NTC) in a letter to the Ghana Education Service (GES), titled as above, reference number (NTC/CPD/272/3/155) attempted to frighten the GES and all teachers in Ghana by referencing their own interpretation of the law as the law itself. NTC talks about a “legal dilemma” which does not exist. The law NTC quoted in their letter (Education Regulatory Bodies Act 2020, Act 1023, 67(1)) talks about “teacher registration”, not “point accumulation”. No part of the law requires that teachers should accumulate any points on anything. Since the NTC letter is addressed to the GES; and teachers are a part of the GES, we wish to respond to NTC as follows: 1. There is no law requiring teachers to build up CPD points or risk their jobs. What makes a teacher is a university or college-level training in a teaching subject and teaching methodology, followed by registration as required by the law. Not a fraudulent scheme of crazy points accumulation from corrupt business units called service providers. If teachers are to succumb to your lengthy and unending demands, they would have to use all their time struggling to appease you with little to no time left to prepare and teach in the classroom. 2. Why must a teacher accumulate up to 85 points to renew his license? Why not 2 points or 1? Your service providers are charging Gh₵75 for 4 points. How much would a teacher spend to get all 85 points? What is your understanding of the financial situation of the Ghanaian teacher? Who made the decision to sell points or require teachers to accumulate points? Who did he/she consult? Where on earth do they make decisions without involving those it affects? The present-day teacher is not the teacher of old. We are no longer easy targets for crazy and ill-thought-out programmes. Teachers didn’t just walk into the Ghanaian classrooms to teach; we went through professional training. What makes a teacher a professional teacher is the scientific systematic steps he employs to deliver lessons to his students in the classroom not somebody’s imaginary points. 3. The introduction of the teacher’s professional development allowance in the past year seems to spur the NTC and their accomplices into targeting the teacher for business. These crazy desires to extort money from the teacher in the name of providing training would not wash. We want to make it clear that the Ghanaian teacher has always undertaken self-development by embarking on further studies in established universities within and outside the country. There is no other public institution that has more qualified staff than the GES. Despite the introduction of the professional development allowance, the Ghanaian teacher is still at the bottom of the public sector remuneration ladder. We are looking up to the government to provide us with rent allowance, vehicle maintenance allowance, and fuel allowance as is been done to officers in other public sector institutions and agencies. The NTC will be more relevant if they join the course to improve the living standards of the teacher. 4. Your so-called training materials and service providers do nothing beyond Googling up reading materials to read in front of a panel of gullible teachers. Such is not training and it is a shame that an institution like the NTC would want to enforce such abject mediocrity as professional development training. We are better off with our long-established practice of going for further studies and undertaking school base in-service training programmes for our members. 5. Lastly, we want to remind the NTC and their accomplices that teachers would not fall for their threats. Our employer is the GES not NTC. The leadership of the GES in Accra may be timid and shaky, but not the teacher in the classroom. We aren’t going to fall for any grand scheme of intimidation and negative conditioning. General Secretary, Wunnam Africanus