Teacher blame game: Justification?

Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is a key determinant of economic development of our nation.

As articulated by the Coordinator of the Third World Network-Africa, Dr Yao Graham, during the 75th Anniversary third public lecture of the University of Ghana, “We have gone from a country which aspired to be a Ghana beyond aid, to being a country which is desperate for aid.

There is a widespread destitution as a result of cost-of-living crisis".

High inflation, low productivity, high unemployment rates, poor resource management, manipulation of pensioners’ investments, delayed payment of food suppliers to schools, poor road network, flooding, delayed payment of approved allowances to workers, student nurses and teacher trainees are clear indicators of the economic distress.

Addressing these economic challenges obviously depends on an enhanced quality-indexed GER at the tertiary education level, because the ‘economic returns for higher education graduates are the highest with an estimated 17 per cent increase in earnings compared with 10 per cent for primary and seven per cent for secondary education’ (WBG, 2017). 

Correlation

Owing to the strong correlation that tertiary education has with economic development, one can appreciate worry about Ghana’s Gross Tertiary Enrolment ratio, which, according to the latest value released by UNESCO in 2020, stood at 18.69 per cent.

However, must the teacher be singled out for blame?

The teacher does not have any direct impact on gross tertiary enrolment ratio value to warrant the blame.

Available aggregated statistics on student admissions over the past three academic years, for example, suggest that our public non-technical tertiary institutions were not able to admit all students who applied for admission into regular programmes.

In 2019/2020, out of 209,246 persons who applied for admission, only 85,907 (41%) were admitted.

As many as 123,339 (59%) could not be admitted.

In 2020/2021, a total of 187,798 applications were received out of which 85,932 (45.8%%) were admitted, leaving behind 101,866 (54.2%).  

In 2021/2022, 235,865 people applied for admission out of which 95,759 (40.6%) were admitted denying as many as 140,106 (59.4%) applicants access to regular programmes in public tertiary institutions.  

The trend in the technical universities is not different.

During the 2019/2020 academic year, 31,250 applications were received out of which 22,932 (73.4%) were offered admission leaving behind 8,318 (26.6%).

In 2020/2021, 50,667 people applied out of which 27,045 (53.4%) were admitted leaving a deficit of 23,622 (46.6%), while in 2021/2022, 33,183 applications were received out of which 21,149 (63.7%) were admitted and a total of 12,034 (36.3%) not admitted (Source: Ghana Tertiary Education Commission, GTEC). 

Challenge

The trend shows clearly that the challenge we have with our tertiary enrolment ratio goes beyond the teacher.

It is not the case that majority of people who should enter our public tertiary institutions do not qualify for admission.

It is just that available facilities in our tertiary institutions are limited in terms of meeting the enrolment needs of applicants.

As Atuahene and Owusu Ansah (2013) observed, “admission to any of the public universities in Ghana is influenced by the availability of academic and residential facilities, as well as government subsidies to institutions.

With the growing demand for participation and the unequalled pace of expansion in residential facilities, access to higher education is determined by available capacities of universities and polytechnics”.

Whose responsibility is it to ensure that lecture theatres, laboratory facilities, library facilities, student accommodation facilities, which are critical in enrolment decisions, are expanded?

Teachers should not be blamed for a cause for which they are not directly accountable.  

The writer is a Professor of Educational Leadership.

E-mail: goduro@ucc.edu.gh