Zulyaden Amadu addressing journalists in Tamale
Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the education sector in the Northern region, have urged government to decentralise teacher recruitment and deployment system.
According to them, the decentralised teacher recruitment and deployment system offers better prospects for improving learning outcomes, teacher accountability and retention than the existing centralised system with its many associated challenges.
A press conference convened by Northern Network for Education Development (NNED) and the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) Alliance and facilitated by School for Life (SfL) and partners in Tamale, disclosed that the existing teacher recruitment and deployment policy in Ghana operates on the basis of a highly centralised system, noting that it involves reporting teacher vacancies in schools to the Ghana Education Service (GES) headquarters through the District and Regional Education offices.
“The GES HQ post the teachers directly to the schools. This top-down approach, according to a SfL (2023) study has not delivered the expected improved learning outcomes,” they stated.
They noted that a study showed that whilst the existing teacher recruitment and deployment strategy and related policies are well intended, the outcomes have been undesirable.
“The strategy and related policies have not been able to address the equity concerns as 68% of the vacancies in this study still remained in rural areas. The quality of basic education was found to be low as 4 out of 6 districts had over 70% of the students who took the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in 2020 obtaining aggregate 30 and above. The centralised recruitment and deployment of teachers was found in the study to be ineffective, as some teachers posted to schools and districts managed to secure reposting to other schools and districts of their choice drawing on their political connections,” they said.
The NGOs lamented about the statistics units of the District and Regional Education offices which are poorly equipped without internet connectivity, computers, cameras and other ICT facilities.
“This has hindered the roll-out of the GES, Education Management Information System (EMIS). Under the limited investments in technology, the teacher recruitment and deployment functions are better handled at the decentralised level of the GES. The current centralisation of teacher recruitment and deployment is associated with bureaucratic red tapeism and delays. This does not make room for local teacher demands due to force majeure or other local circumstances requiring immediate actions to be handled expeditiously. These flexibilities are only efficient and effective with a decentralised teacher recruitment and deployment system,”
Mr. Zulyaden Amadu, Project Manager, School for Life, addressing journalists in Tamale, said the centralised deployment of teachers has weakened the decentralised accountability structures in the GES, adding that District Directors are powerless.
“Teachers enter and exit districts at will because they deal directly with officers at the GES HQ. The District Offices merely serve as conveyer belts for processing salaries for teachers, with limited capacity to monitor and discipline teachers. The centralised system of deploying teachers has affected the GES Language of Instruction (LI) policy. The LI policy was approved in 2004 through a government white paper, and stipulates that the medium of instruction at the lower primary school level (KG1-P3) should be the dominant local language or playground language of the child. The policy prescribes that at the upper primary level (P4-P6), English should be taught as the medium of instruction (L2) while Ghanaian language is taught as a subject. However, many of the teachers posted from the HQ hardly speak the local language and are therefore unable to implement the LI policy in the schools where they are posted,” he noted.
He hinted that the centralised deployment of teachers will potentially impact learning where pupils-trained teacher ratio between rural and urban schools are likely to increase as well as the possibility of many more teachers facing mental health and psychosocial challenges which cannot be discounted.
According to him, the NGOs recommend to the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service a decentralised teacher recruitment and deployment system so that once the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning gives financial clearance for the recruitment of teachers, the recruitment and posting of teachers should be done at the District Education Offices (DEOs), because they have local knowledge of the teacher situation and are therefore better placed to deploy teachers than the current centralised system.
“We also recommend the equitable deployment of teachers requires timely, accurate and reliable data. It is therefore recommended to the MoE and GES to invest a modicum of its resources in equipping their planning, monitoring, data collection, research and records units at the various DEOs and REOs. The staff of these units should also be given refresher training to enable them collect, analyse, store and transmit data on teachers and other education key performance indicators. This will help in improving teacher rationalisation and deployment in Ghana,” he stated.
“Given the huge teacher deficits in the rural areas, it is recommended that policies aimed at motivating teachers to teach in rural areas such as the 20% deprived teachers’ allowance, affordable and decent accommodation, accelerated promotion and free modules for continuous professional development should be implemented immediately. These will motivate teachers to accept postings to rural areas,” he added.
FROM Eric Kombat, Tamale