Make your voices heard — Tettey-Enyo
The Association of Retired Professional Teachers of Ghana (ARPTOG) has launched its fifth anniversary celebration with a call on retired teachers in the country to make their voices heard on national issues.
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A former Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, who made the call, said teachers were key to the growth and development of every nation; hence, their contributions to national developments could not be overlooked.
However, he said retired teachers had been silent on national issues for a very long time and needed to break that “culture.”
Marked on the theme “Defining quality education and attaining it to meet the challenges of the millennium; the role of ARPTOG,” the occasion brought together retired teachers from across the country to discuss how they could contribute to the growth and development of education in the country.
The occasion, which was used to raise funds to support the association, was also used to confer on Mr K.B. Asante and Prof. Jerome Siau Djangmah honorary membership titles of ARPTOG.
Importance of retired teachers
Underscoring the contributions of professional teachers to the growth and development of the nation, Mr Tettey-Enyo indicated that teachers were those who trained and raised people to become leaders.
He observed that Ghana could not attain the kind of development it envisaged without the contributions of teachers, on national issues.
Quality education
Speaking on the theme, Prof. Djangmah, who is a Visiting Professor of Education and Science at the University of Education, Winneba (UEW), said quality education was imperative to the progress of the Ghanaian education system.
While admitting that the Ghanaian education system had attained some level of quality, he noted that more could be done to help it attain the highest quality it had always craved for.
Decentralise education
Prof. Djangmah said there was the need for decentralisation in education, noting that education was fully concentrated in the capital. “In spite of the quality of education in the country, it is constrained and concentrated in the cities,” he stressed.
The educational expert stated that education should not only be managed in Accra; rather, strong policies should be put in place such that every district would have their own centre, while a strong level of supervision was ensured.
By this, he said quality education could reach every child in the hinterland, saying that it was the right of every Ghanaian child to get quality education no matter where the individual attended school, be it private or public.
That, he believed, could meet the kind of quality needed in the Ghanaian education, and called on stakeholders to ensure that.
He further charged retired teachers across the country to act as influences on the policies of education in the country, adding, “your views are highly needed to ensure we all obtain the highest form of quality education.”
History of Ghanaian education
Mr K. B. Asante said Ghanaians had developed antipathy towards Ghana’s history, adding that there was a lot to learn from the past to know what to do now and in the future.
“We have always ignored history, so we keep repeating the very mistakes we are not supposed to,” he stated.
As far as the present educational system is concerned, Mr Asante said a lot could be learnt from the past to help transform the present one.
For her part, the immediate past Chair of ARPTOG, Mrs Rose Ankrah, called on the current executive and entire members across the country to contribute their quota to the development of the association.
