Correspondence from Northern Region

A consortium of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) working in the education sector has called on the government to decentralise the recruitment and deployment of teachers in the country.

The Northern Network for Education Development (NNED), CBE Alliance, and School for Life say reforms in teacher recruitment and deployment policy will address long-standing inequities and improve learning outcomes in schools in rural areas.

According to the CSOs, the current centralisation of teacher recruitment, where teachers are posted directly from the Ghana Education Service Headquarters in Accra, makes it difficult for the successful implementation of the GES’ Language of Instruction policy.

Addressing a press conference in Tamale, Project Manager at School for Life, Zulyadeen Amadu, said most of these teachers posted from the headquarters hardly speak the local language of the area and are therefore unable to interact with pupils.

He believes the decentralisation of teacher recruitment will ensure that teachers posted can speak the local language of the area they are assigned to.

Amadu said, “The LI policy was approved in 2004 through a government white paper and stipulates that the medium of instruction at the lower primary school level (KG1-P3) should be the dominant local language or playground language of the child. The policy prescribes that at the upper primary level (P4-P6), English should be taught as the medium of instruction while the Ghanaian language is taught as a subject.”

“However, many of the teachers posted from the HQ hardly speak the local language and are therefore unable to implement the LI policy in the schools where they are posted,” he added.