Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh
Education Minister Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has said the NPP government has made conscious efforts to ensure that teacher-centred initiatives are introduced to bring some relief to those in the teaching profession.
According to him, the government has, among other things, ensured the restoration of teacher training allowance, ensured prompt payment of teachers’ salaries, upgraded the status and skills of teachers and boosted teaching and learning.
“The Akufo-Addo administration has invested and continues to invest in teachers. One of such investment is when the Ministry of Education, in conjunction with the Ministry of Finance, Fair Wages and Salaries Commission and union leaders signed a collective agreement with teachers’ unions in August 2020 on conditions of service for teachers. This has significantly helped to improve the delivery of teachers and attitude towards work,” he said.
Speaking at the sixth edition of the Nation-Building Update in Accra yesterday under the theme: ‘The Teacher at the Centre of Quality Education’, the Education Minister indicated that “the government has introduced a professional teacher allowance of GH¢1, 200 per year for the professional teachers and GH¢800 per year for non-professional teachers to complement the already existence allowance packages for our teachers.”
“This will enable teachers to invest in improving and upgrading their skills and keeping abreast with modern trends to assist in improving learning outcomes. We have also instituted Professional Development Days (PDD) and Professional Learning Communities (PLC) for teaching staff, where they would take time off work to develop their skills through note comparison,” he said.
Dr. Opoku Prempeh, who is also the MP for Manhyia South, outlined 23 achievements and interventions of the ruling NPP in addressing the plights of teachers in the country.
He said when the NPP administration assumed office in 2017, there was a backlog of unemployed graduate teachers due to the freezing of public sector employment by the IMF over economic mismanagement by the Mahama administration but the NPP has since worked hard to clear the backlog.
He said they have recruited 93,724 teaching and non-teaching staff into pre-tertiary institutions across the country, with the Ghana Education Service (GES) given clearance to employ a further 27,367 by the end of 2020.
The minister said the restoration of the teacher training allowances has improved the conditions of teacher trainees and has contributed to the increased enrolment in colleges of education from 44,813 in 2016/17 to 48,085 in 2018/19 despite having the same entry requirements with traditional universities.
NDC Misinformation
He accused the NDC of spreading what he called ‘misinformation’ on teachers welfare benefits, adding that “those who don’t understand teaching and who want to get teacher sympathy votes are lying to people that they will come to restore teacher responsibility allowance which has never been taken.”
He said the NPP government has not cancelled teachers’ responsibility allowance or taken away teachers transfer grants.
According to him, there are only eight or nine categories of teachers who receive responsibility allowance, including head of basic schools, chaplains and imams, head of departments, form masters and form mistresses, unit head, among others.
“If you were a form master and you have this responsibility allowance and you have gone for promotion, and you have become a district director, you are no longer entitled to that professional allowance. It’s basic HR. Because where you are going comes up with new allowances,” he said, adding “and since the last promotion was done in July, people’s statuses have been changed. So Ghana Education Service should rework out their allowances. So this doesn’t mean it has been cancelled.”
By Melvin Tarlue