An open letter to President John Mahama

Dear President,

May the peace of God whom you serve be upon you. May He open your heart, mind, eyes and ears to absorb, comprehend, see and hear all that I have to tell you this day.

I am a citizen of Ghana who cares about the collective welfare of the youth of Ghana and the improvement of our education system.

Your excellency, you bear witness to the fact that every Ghanaian needs quality education and you are a major proponent of that assertion. But what is the essence of going through four years of tedious academic work at the university to be trained as a teacher with the view to imparting knowledge to the young ones but end up with all these knowledge and skills getting stucked in their head because of unemployment, then where lies the country's future?

Mr. President, you are also aware that no sector can operate without getting the required level of education. Every country that has reached its highest level never left out well qualified teachers.

Mr President, you are aware that this government through the Ghana Education Service placed a ban on recruiting graduate teachers since August 20,2013. This ban has come at a time that the country lacks about 30,000 teachers. The ban has worsened the problem of graduate unemployment because graduate teachers cannot access public sector teaching.

The GES recently recruited 2400 Mathematics, Science, English and Geography teachers to be posted to the various senior high schools in the country and I want to draw your attention that amongst these people who were selected, only 40% of them are graduate teachers. The rest are graduates without education background. Meanwhile many of the qualified applicants from UCC and UEW were not selected.

We are not happy of the criteria used in selecting these teachers.How can we develop as a country if those who qualify to teach have been relegated to the background.its a very big insult to our intelligence and the institutions that trained us.

There are more than 16,000 trained teachers with specialization in Arts Education, Economics, History, Political Science, Basic Education, Early Childhood, Accounting, Management, Mathematics, Science, English ,Special Education, Social Studies Education. These graduates have the requisite skills and knowledge in methodology and content of their subject area and can transform the sorry state of our education system.

Your Excellency, I want to draw your attention to the fact that, since 2013 that you placed the ban on teaching ,the performance in BECE and WASSCE have dwindled. This is because, fresh minds are no more employed to bring on board the new methods of teaching.

Your Excellency, I want to remind you that, I was an undergraduate student in University of Education Winneba, when you visited the University community as part of your central region tour on Friday February 28,2014, you stated that, teacher trainees in the University unlike graduates of other institutions were readily assured of job prospects, considering the huge demands of teachers in the country.

You therefore advised the management of UEW to consider training graduates in specialized areas such as Mathematics ,Science ,French and Information Communication Technology (ICT) now that their demand in the teaching field is on the high side.Mr.President so what happened afterwards??? I believe you have forgotten your promise.

Why should GES post teacher trainees who were not bonded but refuse to post graduates from the teacher training universities since 2013????This ban has detered most Senior High school graduates to enter the University of Education, Winneba and the University of Cape Coast to pursue educational programmes because of the fear of not getting job.

I will plead with you to use your powers to remedy this situation if you want to amass votes from the youth in the upcoming elections.