The Ghana Education Service (G. E. S) has urged its staff accros the country to remaind calm as it embarks on a major reforms.
Fear and panic gripped some staff of the service after discussions on realignment and re-asignment of staff and units started.
But the service assured that nobody will loss his or her job as a result of the ongoing reforms.
” Our prayer is that, at this stage, nobody should panic”; nobody will lose his or her job but is also too early not to start speculating,Deputy Director General in charge of Managerial services Lawyer Anthony Boateng (DDG-MS) allay fears.
When you go to the districts where the actual activities is, the thinking of section of the service is that there are too many people repeating themselves or dublicate and therefore can we look at issue of the numbers or maximizing the human resource available, Mr Boateng said.
The current reforms the service explained was meant to improve quality, equitable and inclusive education in Ghana.
Under the reforms, some units will witnessed changes with some staff moved to new offices.
Discussions according to him are afoot to downsize G. E. S headquarters staff and divisions with some additional skills to help deliver on its mandate.
The Managerial Boss who disclosed this to journalists said the view for many was that, the headquarters should be very technical and comprises of very few technical people to be involved in policy dissemination and harmonization.
The headquarters will focus more on providing classrooms and learning, policy dissemination and harmonization if some of the suggestions are considered.
Mr Boateng was given updates of GES institutional reforms at a day’s sensitization workshop for selected journalists across the country held at Larteh, Akuapem in the Eastern Region.
The workshop was to update journalists on the Secondary Education Improvement Program (SEIP) and the major reforms in the service.
Under the reforms, Ciruit Supervisor whose role was to coordinate school teachers performance will now be moved to a new office called School Improvement Support office (SIS).
Mr Boateng explained that, SIS officer reports will recounts what the challenges were, deal with the idefied issues and what the officer and school management have been able to do before inviting other superior officers.
The new reforms will also consolidate some activities which are Yoo spread with too many people.
Three offices of inclusion education will be created to take care of all girls and boys, nomadic boys, disability children among others, he added.
GES under the new reforms which seeks to look at the entire structure and spectrum of GES
DDG – MS stated will no longer be responsible for private schools matters.
Previate schools are providing pre-tertiary education in the private sector and GES in the other hand is providing in the public sector therefor GES can’t be regulatory its competitor, Mr Boateng explained.
The National Teaching Council (N. T. C) will be solely responsible for setting standards and benchmarks in educational in the country.
The council will be responsible for issuing license and withdrawal of same. The National Council for Curriculum Assessment will be responsible for all books being use in schools and all curriculum issues.
Before any one becomes a professional teacher, uptitude test, conduct, achievement over a period in a classroom and successfully going through the required programs or models is mandatory before they can be certified to be eligible to take the Uptitude test.
School level issues
At the school level, Mr Boateng indicated that there were suggestion of the teacher position to be streghten because of the debate over head teacher being able to sanctioned the who doesn’t go to school or not performing?
He said even though the decision was in place now, the process takes too long and by the time the issue goes to the school, it lost its relevance for head teacher to execute the appropriate sanctions.
Head teacher also being held responsible for none performance or very good. A real system of accountability framework he said has been developed alongside the existing structure.
Minimum qualifications for teachers now 1st degree
As part of programs reform, all teachers within the service minimum qualification will be first degree beginning 2022, DDG-MS hinted.
Every body entering GES he explained will enter with first degree after 4-year training program from the colleges of education.
The faith of those with diplomas and are already in the system Mr Boateng said will need to be provided some facility and opportunity for them to upgraded to become first degree holders.
However, those who can’t upgrade will gradually have to be faceout.
First batch of teachers since the training colleges upgraded to colleges of education will graduate in 20222.
When asked about the pupils teachers currently still being engage by GES, Mr Boateng said they will continue until they upgrade themselves to meet the standards.
Teacher unions and civil organizations through their leadership have been involved in the ongoing reforms to avert agitations by the teachers front.
Under the reforms, the National Inspectary Board (NIB) will now serve as an external auditor to ensure schools performs in accordance with basic standards.
