GES ASSURES UNION TEACHERS OF “QUALITY OF EDUCATION” UNDER NEW BILL

The Ghana Education Service (GES), has assured union teachers that the Pre-tertiary Education Bill before parliament if passed into law, will help improve the quality of education and supervision in Ghana.

He has, therefore, guaranteed teacher unions that the bill will not, in any way, compromise the quality of education because the GES would continue to play the supervisory role.

This assurance is to help allay fears of union teachers who feel that the quality of education might be compromised.

The Director of GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, made this known in an interview in Accra yesterday. He said that even though under the bill basic education would be ceded to the district assemblies, “the quality of education will not be compromised”.

“We will always set the parameters within which pre-tertiary education should be delivered,” he assured the teacher unions.

Last week, they called on Parliament to suspend any further deliberations on the Pre-tertiary Education Bill until they (the unions) had resolved all outstanding issues with the Ministry of Education.

The teacher unions, comprising the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) and the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT)-Ghana, said if the bill was passed, it would destabilise the teaching profession in that it would break or dismember the unified service currently in place, as well as break the unified conditions of service under which teachers worked.

“This notice we serve the Parliament of Ghana. We wish to caution that should our stance be disregarded or ignored, we pre-tertiary education unions will advise ourselves accordingly,” they warned.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa used the opportunity to remind the teacher unions and the public that the bill remained as such, not an act, and advised them to make any input that they deemed fit.

“I believe that whatever input that could be made, this is the opportune time to make it,” he said, adding that that was what every Ghanaian would expect of them

Source: Graphiconline