High school dropout rate in north: Students abandoning classrooms to south for illegal mining — UW GNAT Chairman
The Upper West Regional branch of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) is worried about the effect of illegal mining on education in the country and has called for a holistic approach to tackle the menace.
The association says one of the challenges facing education in the region is school dropouts as a result of illegal mining activities.
It said the illegal mining is luring students, particularly those in junior high, to abandon school and travel south to engage in it.
The regional chairman of the association, Ivon Kuule, who disclosed this during the quadrennial delegates conference of GNAT in Wa, said the challenge needed urgent attention to
“Ensure that we provide the best quality of education to all children of school age in the region.”
He said even though members of the association were doing their best to provide the students in the region with the best of tuition, some of the challenges needed urgent attention.
He cited high teacher attrition rate, lack of accommodation and basic social amenities, especially in the hard-to-reach communities, inadequate school infrastructure and inadequate resources for the implementation of the new curriculum for both the junior and senior high schools.
The other challenge, according to him, was the validation of its members, leading to some members’ names being removed from the payroll.
This issue, he said, affects the morale of the teachers and called on the validators to be more diligent in their work to ensure that “our members’ names do not go off regularly.”
Stewardship
Giving an account of his stewardship over the last four years, Mr Kuule said the association had grown its membership from 81.7 per cent of the total number of teachers in the region in 2021 to 90.4 per cent in 2025.
He said out of the 10,395 teachers in the region, 9,400 were members of GNAT and expressed the hope that at the next quadrennial conference, all teachers in the region would join GNAT.
“Leadership in the region continuously strives to retain and recruit members into the association.
We are on 'operation 100 per cent' for GNAT,” he said.
He said the region also organised a training workshop for district secretaries and treasurers to improve on their report writing and presentation of financial returns, and also ensured that all the districts were financially resourced to carry out their activities.
Peace
The National President of GNAT, Rev. Isaac Owusu, appealed to the government and all stakeholders to ensure peace in Bawku as the situation there was affecting its members.
He said the government should do all it could to restore peace in Bawku to prevent a situation where the association would be compelled to ask the government to evacuate its members from Bawku.
Provident fund
He encouraged the members to take advantage of the GNAT provident fund to secure a better retirement for themselves.
He said the association had a tax exemption of 16.5 per cent for all contributors to the provident fund.
However, he said, out of the total number of more than 270,000, those taking part in the provident fund were less than 16,000 and therefore, appealed to them to join the fund for their benefit.
