Yaw Buaben Asamoa
Education under the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) has greatly improved with equal access to every Ghanaian and also with improved working conditions for teachers.
Addressing a press conference in Accra yesterday, the Communications Director of the NPP, Yaw Buaben Asamoa, said the NPP government had given an unalloyed commitment to education because it saw education as a huge means to eliminating poverty and also to accelerate the socioeconomic development of the country.
He said with that in mind the Akufo-Addo government introduced the Free Senior High School policy as a first step towards securing the country’s future.
According to the NPP Communications Director, conditions of services for teachers who are the fulcrum of education have been given serious priority.
“On teacher promotion and salary adjustments, the former expensive and laborious face-to-face process which was riddled with perceptions of corruption and victimization had been abolished and replaced with an aptitude test,” he said.
He said conditions of service for teachers were being diligently worked on, adding that in August 2020, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Finance and Fair Wages and Salaries Commission signed a collective agreement with three teacher unions backed by a conditions document.
He said now teachers posted to deprived areas would receive special allowance, teachers would be entitled to vehicle maintenance allowance, night allowance, retention allowance, protective clothing allowance, salary advance, special allowance and permanent posting allowance as well as transfer grants.
“There is also the responsibility allowance. All 35,515 staff who are entitled to responsibility allowance are being paid. Currently the nine categories of staff entitled to responsibility allowance include basic school heads, headmasters or headmistresses, assistant headmasters or headmistresses, chaplains or imams, form masters or form mistresses, guidance and counselling coordinators, heads of department, housemasters or housemistresses as well as unit heads.
The Communications Director said since teachers were the backbone of effective teaching the NPP government had restored teacher training allowances and converted all the 46 Colleges of Education from diploma awarding institutions to degree awarding (B.Ed) ones affiliated to five public universities to promote perfect competition for teacher education in Ghana
“We have developed a National Teacher Education Curriculum Framework to guide teacher education institutions in the development of relevant world class curricula,” he said, stressing that the government has also developed National Teacher Education Assessment Policy to ensure the training of high-quality teachers fit for teaching the new standards-based curriculum in basic schools.
By Thomas Fosu Jnr