GES releases 2nd promotion exams results 63.3% teachers pass

About 29,465 candidates who sat for the Ghana Education Service (GES) promotion examination on February 25 and 26, 2021 were successful.

They wrote the exam for promotion to the rank of either a Principal Superintendent, Assistant Director II (ADII), Assistant Director I (ADI), or Deputy Director (DD).

The figure, which represents 63.3 per cent, is an improvement over the 61 per cent performance last year.

Mixed up

The Director-General of the GES Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, who disclosed this, explained that about 17,000 of the candidates who wrote the exam were unsuccessful, adding that about 1,600 of them were required to present their documents for further verification.

The DG said, for instance, that one of such candidates who was already on the rank of ADII applied for promotion to ADII.

“After the release of the results online, several calls received indicated that more than 1,600 people had received the message ‘to present their documents for further verification’ before their results could be released.

“These were people in the categories of ‘queried’ and those in the ‘unsuccessful’. The promotion results system was instantly shut down to correct the error,” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa explained.

He further explained that bulk sms was sent to all 46,000 candidates, informing them of the shutdown and requesting that they recheck their results after 1p.m. on Saturday, June 5, 2021.

“The correction was effected, tested and the portal restored by 1pm on Saturday, June 5, 2021,” the DG said.

Correct message

He said all the candidates received the right message subsequently either as:

“Congratulations! You have passed the promotion exam. Your promotion letter will be sent to the Regional office in due course.

“Or further verification required. Please submit the following documents to your Regional office for verification: original promotion letter, recent payslip or original certificates,” Prof. Opoku-Amankwa told journalists.

He added that the third category of candidates received, “sorry, you were unsuccessful. Better luck next time,” as their message, explaining that “this is how the original message should have been.

Queried category

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said there was not a single person who could claim that he/she passed and when the system was pulled down and brought back his/her circumstance had changed.

“Our 16 regional offices have since Monday been verifying documents presented by candidates in the ‘queried’ category.

“This exercise has been calm and smooth and without incident,” he said, adding that so far about 905 candidates had been vetted.

He said those vetted would be forwarded to the headquarters for further checks, and when resolved, “deserving candidates who passed will be informed and processed for promotion”.

Technological challenge

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said “the good news is that the service has scheduled to conduct another promotion exam this year,” the process of which would commence in August 2021 and encouraged those who unfortunately could not make it in the February test to take advantage of the second test.

He attributed the challenge with the release of the results to “a slight technological challenge” which was resolved as soon as it was realised.

Teacher unions

The DG indicated that management of GES engaged the teacher unions, explained the situation and assured them that the challenge had been duly rectified.

The teachers expressed hope that the proposed second test for the year would come and offer those who were unsuccessful another opportunity.