It was John Adams, the second President of the United States of America, who said that the teacher “is a maker of man. He is the foundation of all education, and thus of the whole civilisation of mankind, present and future”.
In his words: “No nation’s reconstruction is possible without the active co-operation of the teacher.”
How true his words are, because every nation’s progress, one way or another, is linked to how truly educated its citizens are, the reason many nations that have made progress lay a lot of emphasis on the education of its citizens.
Indeed, without the active participation and co-operation of the teacher, no effort by the government in the educational sector will succeed. That is why issues concerning the teacher always become issues of great importance to the whole nation.
Successive governments in the country have taken steps to improve the service conditions of teachers, all in an effort to ensure that they offer their best. In recent times, teachers are among public sector workers who have been migrated onto the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) to ensure that our dedicated teachers earn living wages.
But, as is the case in many other sectors, the distribution of teachers in the country appears to be skewed towards the urban and peri-urban areas, to the detriment of the rural communities which produce a greater part of the nation’s wealth.
Addressing a meeting of district chief executives from the northern sector of the country yesterday, the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, indicated that there were more teachers in the urban areas than required, while the less-privileged districts had inadequate number of teachers, a reason the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) were undertaking a teacher rationalisation exercise.
The Daily Graphic fully supports the rationalisation exercise and calls for measures to ensure that teachers transferred to deprived districts, together with those currently serving there, are given special incentives to remain in those districts.
We recall that during the implementation of the Single Spine Pay Policy, one of the issues that featured prominently was market premium, which was to be determined by the government based on service classifications or occupational groups.
Unfortunately, the market premium became a subject that triggered many unwarranted demands on the government and led to workers’ agitation and strikes. Perhaps this is the time when serious consideration should be given to this special incentive for teachers.
We call on the teacher associations — the Ghana National Association of Teachers, the National Association of Graduate Teachers and the recently formed Coalition of Concerned Teachers — to join hands with the ministry and the GES to ensure that the distribution of teachers is evenly done for the benefit of citizens in all corners of the country.
An even distribution of teachers throughout the country is one sure way of having the full benefit of the high calibre of teachers that we have in the country.
