Editorial by Ghanaian Times: Ghana needs best brains to be teachers

If licensure has become one of the modern ways of improving professions because it protects the public by enforcing standards as it restricts practice to only quali­fied individuals, then one area that needs the licensure is the teaching profession.

It therefore came as good news when the country start­ed Ghana Teachers Licensure Examination (GTLE) in 2018.

Even though it was not unexpected that some of the teachers would fail, the failure rate of this year’s examina­tion, the 10th in the series, is unprecedented and has caught massive attention of the public.

Out of 7, 728 candidates who took the 10th GTLE held on May 4 and 5, 2023, only 1,277, forming 16.5 per cent passed it, which obvious­ly shows that the 6,451 who failed make up 83.5per cent.

Even though this year’s fail­ure rate is very high, can you imagine that the percentages of failures of two GTLEs held in 2021 were 76.90 and 45.50 respectively?

The Ministry’s assertion that prior to 2021 the failure rate hovered around 27 per cent seems to water down the problem, but the truth is that performance at the GTLE has not been good.

With the current case, the average failure rate since 2018 is 46.07, which represents almost half of the teacher population at the pre-uni­versity level of the country’s education system.

We think all things being equal, this is unacceptable be­cause if teachers who should guide the country’s children to build the foundation for higher studies are themselves academically bankrupt, then the country’s future is shaky.

Already there are signs that academic standards in the country have drastically fallen.

For instance, there are mis­spelling and wrong expres­sions and sentences in certain correspondences, the media and other sources like funeral brochures and labels on cer­tain products.

Since the release of the results of the 10th GTLE, some members of the public have either expressed views for the way forward or won­dered what can be done.

Fortunately, the Ministry of Education has announced that it will soon inaugurate a committee to investigate the causes of the mass failures recorded in the GTLE since its inception.

We think the committee is long overdue, considering the poor performance in the GTLE since its inception.

We say this because the rea­son for introducing it should have prompted the authorities to jump in early enough to save the situation.

Even though our system has not collapsed totally, any boast about it is like one tick­ling oneself and laughing.

The yet-to-be inaugurated committee, we can imagine, has its terms of reference already and so it is our prayer that it would do thorough work and pay much attention to the calibre of persons ad­mitted to the colleges of edu­cation which train teachers.

It is sad that most of the time such prospective stu­dents are those who could not be considered for their preferred professions.

Teachers should be people of best brains and such peo­ple can only be attracted with good working conditions and comparable remunerations after training.

Therefore, we suggest that the committee should address this issue in its recommenda­tions.

We cannot improve the education system with people who are teaching by default.