They were young, hopeful, and ready to serve.
Fresh out of college, they packed their few belongings — chalk, lesson notes and dreams — and set out to shape the minds of Ghana’s future.
That was about three decades ago. Today, another generation of teachers is walking that same weary path, weighed down by the same broken promises.
In 1995, the cries of newly posted teachers who had taken appointments a year earlier echoed across the nation. Many had not been paid for months.
They taught in mud-walled classrooms, walked miles to reach their pupils, and lived on borrowed coins from sympathetic villagers.
Some queued for their salaries “on tabletop” — a humiliating ritual that reduced trained professionals to beggars.
Those images, etched in memory, were supposed to belong to the past.
But fast forward 30 years, and history has cruelly repeated itself. Little seems to have changed.
Once again, young teachers find themselves stranded in remote communities, unpaid for months, their hopes fading with each passing day.
Their stories spill over the airwaves — shaky voices breaking down in tears as they recount hunger, debt and despair.
One could almost hear the echo of yesterday in their sobs.
“Tete ne nea wahu” — to wit, what you have seen is history or the olden days are what one has witnessed.
I was an eyewitness in 1994/95, when postings and salary payments for newly trained teachers from colleges of education (then teacher training colleges) were delayed. Many were sent to remote areas, surviving from hand to mouth as months passed without pay.
Those were the days when newly trained teachers went to replace pupil teachers — their appointment letters even bearing the names of those they were replacing.
The pupil teachers, mostly locals, were concentrated in the very rural communities professional teachers were reluctant to serve.
The first hurdle these young professionals had to clear was the hostility bred by misinformation — that the new teachers had come to sack the pupil teachers.
You can imagine the ire of the townfolk: the enemy has come — the one who has come to deprive our own of his daily bread and livelihood.
A painful déjà vu
Ghana’s education system seems trapped in a tragic time loop.
The Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) keep repeating the mistakes of the past — expecting change without reform.
Bureaucratic inertia has turned teaching from a noble profession into an endurance test.
It is heartbreaking and shameful that in 2025, teachers must still plead for what should be automatic: their salaries.
The Controller and Accountant-General’s explanations bring no comfort to those begging to survive.
Every day of silence from leadership deepens the wounds of neglect and erodes the dignity of a profession that shapes our nation’s future.
“When teachers are not motivated, the entire education system suffers.”
My former lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, K.K. Anti, said this decades ago — and it rings true now more than ever.
A former Minister of Education once added, “You can’t talk about quality education when the people delivering it cannot even afford to live decently.”
We know what needs to be done. We simply lack the will to do it.
The world has moved — Ghana has not Research has long confirmed what experience has taught us.
The 2018 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report revealed that countries investing in teacher welfare record faster human capital and economic growth. the President of the Learning Policy Institute, Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, puts it bluntly: “High-performing education systems succeed because they treat teachers as nation-builders, not as expendable labour.”
Finland and Singapore offer lessons we can no longer ignore. In Finland, teachers are among the most respected professionals — highly trained, trusted, and well-compensated.
In Singapore, teaching is one of the most competitive careers, supported by constant professional development and fair remuneration.
Both nations prove that when you treat teachers with dignity, you build a future that endures.
Contrast that with Ghana, where teachers still fight for basic entitlements — salaries, teaching materials, accommodation and respect.
The result is predictable: low morale, poor performance, and an exodus of bright minds seeking better prospects abroad.
A cycle of neglect
This isn’t abstract talk — it is measurable. It is trite knowledge that teacher motivation is directly linked to student performance and national productivity.
Yet Ghana seems to treat its teachers as an afterthought — and the nation pays the price.
The consequences are clear: graduates who struggle to fit into industry, joblessness that fuels frustration, and a growing sense of hopelessness among the youth.
As one retired educationist told me, “You can’t pour from an empty vessel.
When you starve teachers, you starve a nation’s future.”
That truth should haunt every policymaker.
How do we expect teachers to inspire excellence when they themselves live in anxiety and financial uncertainty?
In 1995, some of the unpaid “’94 batch” teachers abandoned their classrooms out of frustration.
Others changed professions entirely. One former teacher recently told this writer, “Anytime I see a GES vehicle, I feel bitterness.
It reminds me of the pain and humiliation we endured. We gave our best, but the system gave us nothing.”
A couple of months ago the GES in a statement in response to teachers’ petitions regarding delays in salary payment gave assurances that “efforts are ongoing to prevent future occurrences by addressing system failures in the recruitment process.”
Good to hear, but that has been the refrain all these years.
The way forward
If Ghana truly seeks progress, it must begin with its teachers.
The solutions are neither new nor complicated: pay teachers promptly and fairly; improve their working and living conditions; provide adequate teaching materials and incentives; and restore the respect and dignity the teaching profession deserves.
The road to national development runs through the classroom. No nation has ever prospered while starving its educators.
The late Kofi Annan once said, “Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” That progress begins — and ends — with empowered teachers.
It is time for Ghana to rise above rhetoric and act decisively.
Our teachers deserve more than applause on World Teachers’ Day — they deserve the dignity, respect and livelihood worthy of their calling.
Anything less is not just negligence — it is betrayal of the very future we claim to be building.
The writer is the Night Editor of the Daily Graphic.
Email: samuel.bio@graphic. com.gh
