FATE OF 657 GRADUATE TEACHERS IN THE BALANCE (PAGE 20, OCT 9)

FIVE hundred and sixty-seven professional graduate teachers who completed their studies last academic year and have fully submitted their posting forms to the Ghana Education Service (GES) have still not been posted to any educational institution.
The reason is that their names were deleted from the pay roll when their salaries ceased, because they went to school without study leave and can, therefore, not be posted to any school.
The National Vice-President of the of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Miss Portia Anafo, disclosed this at the third Upper West Regional conference of the association in Wa.
The conference was on the theme: ”Professional and socio-economic challenges of the teacher in the face of globalisation. “the way forward”.
Miss Anafo, therefore, called on the GES and the government to, as a matter of urgency, review the policy and tap the full capacity of those teachers for the sake of the country.
She added that there were shortages in the areas of the Sciences and English Language, which must be addressed.
“If we are very serious with education matters in this country, the quota system that regulates study leave for teachers will not include these specialised subjects areas”, Miss Anafo stressed.
She was of the view that the present quota system, as it operated, continued to render efforts for quality education useless, and as such “GNAT is calling on the government and for that matter the GES to find ingenious ways of attracting teachers to study in these areas”.
The GNAT vice-president noted with regret that the responsibility allowance paid to deserving teachers continued to be very low, and expressed hope that a second look would be taken at the issue.
On the implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), Miss Anafo viewed it as the most transparent effort to remove members of the association from perpetual discrimination that had characterised many pay regimes in the country.
“We, therefore, call on the government to keep to its part of the bargain and follow the road map for the SSSS implementation in January 2010 to forestall any future labour unrest in the country,” she said
Miss Anafo admonished members of GNAT not to allow political persuasion to divide them .
The Upper West Regional Minister, Mr Mahmud Khalid, for his part, described the role of teachers as challenging, which required continuous skills to upgrade themselves to meet the requisite manpower demanded of the fast changing, technologically inclined and knowledge–based economy.
He stated that the government would from next year grant a special rural allowance of an additional 20 per cent of salaries to teachers who accepted postings to deprived areas.
The Dean of the Faculty of Integrated Development Studies of the Wa Campus of the University for Development Studies, Professor Abraham Berinyuu, said the university would from next academic year, come out with programmes in education, and urged teachers to avail themselves of the opportunity.