Government urged not to abolish allowance for teacher trainees
A retired Headmaster of the T. I. Ahmadiyya Senior High School in Kumasi, Mr I. K. Gyasi, has called on the government to rescind its decision to abolish allowances for teacher trainees, as it is likely to undermine the recruitment of teachers with proven competence into the profession.
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“The allowances act as incentives to entice certain categories of brilliant students into the teaching profession, but with the situation now, the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service are likely to miss such students,” Mr Gyasi explained during an exclusive interview with the Daily Graphic on his views on the government’s decision to abolish allowances for teacher trainees from the 2013/14 academic year.
Among other reasons assigned by the government to abolish the allowances are the lack of funds to support them and the need for students of colleges of education to source students’ loans just as their counterparts in other tertiary institutions do.
The desire of the government to create more space for potential teacher trainees to be admitted to colleges of education and the upgrading of training colleges into tertiary status also informed the government’s decision to abolish the allowances.
Expressing his views on the issue, Mr Gyasi said students entered the colleges of education for various reasons, explaining that while some of them did so as a last resort, “other brilliant students seek admission not only because of the allowances but because they also have the heart to pursue teaching as a career, so we are likely to lose such category of teachers if the government goes ahead to implement this decision”.
“There will always be children to teach at the basic level in both rural and urban schools, but the teacher remains key to quality education because he nurtures the natural talent of the child,” he noted.
Referring to the story published in the August 15, 2013 edition of the Daily Graphic in which the General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Mrs Irene Duncan Adanusa, was reported to have stated that “an estimated 33,185 teachers had abandoned their posts in recent years to seek greener pastures elsewhere”, Mr Gyasi said at the basic level, teachers were very few, but their workload was heavy.
He said the implementation of the government’s decision was also likely to affect the posting of teachers to rural communities.
“It is because of the allowances that teachers are bonded for a number of years and also accept posting to deprived communities. When these allowances are abolished, teachers are likely to refuse posting to deprived communities because they will not receive any financial support from the government,” he said.
On the intention of the government to expand the colleges of education to create space for many students to be trained as teachers, he said that decision would not flood teachers at the basic level, explaining that teachers who left the profession because of ill-health, retirement and for greener pastures were always at the high levels of education.
By George Ernest Asare/Daily Graphic/Ghana