Tamale Education Directorate reposts 128 teachers
The Tamale Metropolitan Directorate of Education has begun a process of redeploying 128 teachers to schools in underserved communities in the area to ensure effective teaching and learning.
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Affected teachers who have so far received their assurance letters from some of the understaffed schools are to be reposted there while those who are yet to be redeployed would be sent to other deprived districts in the Northern Region upon advice from the Regional Directorate of Education.
The exercise forms part of the ongoing teacher redeployment and rationalisation programme in the country. Following the exercise in the Northern Region in January this year, it came to light that in all, 579 teachers and non-teaching staff, including Arabic instructors, were in schools in the metropolis that were found to be overstaffed.
The Tamale Metropolitan Director of Education, Alhaji Mohammed Abdul-Rahman Saani, who was speaking at an evaluation meeting in Tamale, asked the affected teachers to not see the exercise as one of victimisation but a necessary measure to ensure equity and improved academic performance.
The meeting was organised by the Net Organisation for Youth Employment and Development (NOYED-Ghana) a non-governmental organisation (NGO). Participants, included education officials and members of a committee that was set-up to oversee the rationalisation exercise in the metropolis.
Challenges
Some of the problems identified during the exercise included the reluctance of some female teachers, especially those with families, to accept postings to schools outside the communities where they reside; refusal of teachers to accept postings to peri-urban and rural communities due to the lack of incentives for them as well as the lack of harmony between some heads of schools and their teachers.
Some of the affected teachers have also complained of the unavailability of transfer grants to enable them to relocate to their new stations.
Transfer grants were supposed to be paid to the affected teachers after reporting to their new stations. The teachers claimed that the non-payment of the grants was making it difficult for them to relocate.
Circuit supervisors
Alhaji Saani asked Circuit Supervisors in the area to always demand staff list and attendance registers of schools to ensure that teachers were not only punctual but reported to school on time.
He commended staff and teachers of some peri-urban schools in the area for their hard work and steadfastness which he said, had contributed significantly to their performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).
The Chairman of the 13-member committee, Mr Steven Alhassan, explained that the committee was established in May this year by the Mayor of Tamale, in collaboration with the education directorate, to collate staffing in the area and to ensure that excess teachers were redeployed to areas that were understaffed.
He said the exercise had since been completed and that the outcome would help decongest the teacher population in the metropolis and also ensure equitable distribution of teachers. It would also encourage teachers to work hard to justify their continuous stay at their respective schools.