Recruit more teachers to ease burden - GNAT appeals to GES

The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to expedite action on recruiting more teachers into the service.

The association says teachers are being overwhelmed by the huge demands of their work thus the need to recruit more teachers.

"For instance, some teachers are compelled to teach on both gold and green tracks which wears them down. What has been more burdensome is the fact that teaching and learning resources supplied to the schools have either been woefully inadequate, not delivered on time or not given at all.

“In order to ease the extra burden on schools, GNAT is calling on GES to recruit more teachers in order to improve the quality work output in the various schools across the country,” the President of GNAT, Ms Philippa Larsen, added.

Call

Ms Larsen made this call last Thursday at the launch of  "The GNAT Standpoint on Education", a book that aims to provide the needed strong foundation at the pre-tertiary sector to improve the quality of public education delivery in the country.

Book

“The GNAT StandPoint on Education” outlines GNAT’s dimension to quality education including: school environment and infrastructure, provision of teaching and learning resources (TLRs), pedagogical issues, learner support, teacher support, mentoring, monitoring and evaluation, among others.

The five-chapter book assesses the quality of pre-tertiary education in the country, Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), teacher recruitment, deployment, management and retention, education in crisis situations, social interventions such as the capitation grant, the school feeding programme and the Free SHS policy.

Launch

Launching the book at the GNAT Hall in Accra, the President of the Presbyterian University College, Rev. Prof. Emmanuel Adow Obeng, said the book was a testament of GNAT’s ability to positively influence decision making in the educational sector of the country.

“This is a statement that education is the focal point of development in this country. It intends to trigger a well-structured social dialogue in the Ghanaian educational sector to ensure that all stakeholders are involved right from the identification of the challenges facing quality education delivery in Ghana through to proffering solutions,” he stated.

He noted that the book stemmed from GNAT’s belief that the “development of a nation is strategically linked with the development of its people and the quality of education they receive.”

Rev. Prof. Obeng, therefore, recommended the book to all professionals and stakeholders who had a genuine interest in pre-tertiary education in Ghana.