Parliament urges more teachers to be trained
The Parliamentary Committee on Education has expressed concern about the Ministry of Education's dependence on national service personnel to teach in the basic educational institutions in the country.
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For instance, for the 2012/2013 service year, about 62 per cent of the 80,000 national service personnel were deployed to the education sector to teach.
The committee said while that served as an interim measure in addressing the inadequate number of teachers, especially in deprived areas, urgent measures should be taken to train more teachers and retain them in the profession.
In its report on the 2014 budget for the education sector, the committee also expressed concern about the high concentration of trained teachers in the urban areas.
It said whereas there was an over-supply of teachers in some areas, others do not have a single trained teacher.
"The committee strongly urges the Ghana Education Service (GES) to sustain the teacher rationalisation exercise and deploy teachers from over-staffed districts to districts in need of more teachers".
It also called on the GES to fully implement the policy of posting newly-trained teachers to deprived areas for at least two years to improve the quality of teaching in such areas.
Teacher Absenteeism
The committee also expressed worry about the high rate of teacher absenteeism and loss of instructional time in public schools.
It observed that in some areas, teachers went to school only twice a week and in some instances, teachers who went to school taught less than the expected number of hours and attributed poor learning outcomes to that situation.
"The committee is, however, happy to note that the ministry intends to implement a policy of Zero Tolerance for Absenteeism where the GES and the Controller and Accountant General's Department will ensure that teachers who unjustifiably absent themselves from school receive no pay".
Other matters
The committee was informed that the pupil/textbook ratio in the three core subjects, English, Mathematics and Science at the basic schools was now one textbook per child.
It, however, came to light during the deliberations that in some schools, just a few copies of textbooks were given to children to share while the bulk was kept in boxes.
The committee, therefore, called on the GES to ensure that headteachers made the textbooks available to pupils.
Again, it came to the attention of the committee that 94 per cent of the Ministry of Education's GOG allocation for 2014 amounting to GH¢4,387,062,473.00 would be committed to the payment of compensation.
The situation meant that the ministry would be left with only six per cent of the GOG allocation to cater for programmes under goods and services and capital expenditure.
Some of the MPs expressed concern about the situation where monies expected to be released as Capitation Grant, were not released.
The Minister of Education, Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman, who moved the motion for the ministry's 2014 budget estimates of GH¢5,816,315,034 to be approved, thanked the House for its frank debate on the ministry's budget.
Other ministries
The House also approved GH¢245,955,307 for the Ministry of Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations, GH¢64,494,995 for Ministry of Justice and Attorney-General's Department, GH¢1,013,251,214 for the Ministry of the Interior and GH¢687,256,558 for the Ministry of Defence.
