Teacher unions fight Education Minister

Two teacher unions have taken on the Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, describing his warning to sack school heads who superintend over a 90 per cent failure rate in examinations as unfortunate and smacks of lack of leadership skills.

The leaders of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) and the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) said a lot of factors contributed to students failing their examinations and not just teachers or head teachers.

They pointed to the unavailability of teaching materials and logistics in most schools as part of the problem.

Speaking to heads of senior high schools (SHS) in Kumasi last Thursday, as part of a two-day working tour to the Ashanti Region, the minister is reported to have stated that “any school that superintends high rate of failure of 90 per cent and above cannot be allowed to operate without accounting to the Ghana Education Service.”

Dr Opoku-Prempeh said the ministry could no longer accept the practice where heads of schools superintended consistently over poor performance and added that “school heads must justify their position with the performance of the students.”

GNAT

But the comment appears to have tickled nerves in the teacher unions.

The General Secretary of GNAT knocked down the idea, insisting that teachers were not to be blamed solely for poor results in basic schools.

 "We believe that as a newly appointed minister, he should have met with stakeholders, laid down his plans for the sector, looked at what the challenges were and looked at what practitioners in the education sector could do to help him achieve his objectives."

He said the association would not accept such utterances and added that threatening teachers was not the solution when teaching materials were not available in most schools.

"It is not the aim of the association to shield teachers and protect them. In fact, we are not sacrosanct. As a matter of fact, we do accept that some of our teachers are not performing, but we cannot use it as a blanket statement and say that he would sack the heads," he explained.

To calm nerves, he urged the minister to hold stakeholders meeting and lay his blueprint for the education sector before them and how the plan would achieve its purpose.

NAGRAT

His counterpart in second cycle schools, Mr Christian Addai-Opoku, the National President of NAGRAT, while sharing similar sentiments, called on the new minister to rather institute a probe into the failure rates and find a lasting solution.

He said NAGRAT’s position was because at his first engagement with teachers as Minister of Education, Dr Opoku-Prempeh should not have started with a threat.

“We expected him to lay down his vision and mission statements and the plans to achieve those visions. After putting all these down, you rally them (school heads) behind that vision, because in the end there are over 250,000 workers who are supposed to help you achieve that vision.

“The best way to help you achieve your vision is not to threaten but to motivate, and get head teachers well informed so that they will rally behind you to achieve your goals. It is really unfortunate that you assume office with threats on the workers. If the children fail to pass their exams, it is not only teachers who are to be blamed. There are several factors, and so it doesn't just take one person to get the result,” he said. 

WASSCE trend

Failure in the WASSCE has been a major issue for sometime now.

 WAEC’s analysis of candidates who can progress in terms of those who had A1-C6 shows that in 2006, it was 12.5 per cent, in 2007 it was only 10.5 per cent, in 2008 it was 12.9 per cent, 2009 was 14.5 per cent; in 2010 there was no WASSCE.

In 2011, it was 26 per cent, in 2012 it was 31 per cent, in 2013 19 per cent and in 2014 it was 28.1 per cent.

In 2015, out of the 242,162 students who sat for the exam, only 68,062 managed to accumulate passes in at least six subjects, including Core Mathematics and English Language.

More than 99,000 students failed in Mathematics and Science, with some recording F9 in both subjects.