The Ghana Education Service (GES) under the Ministry
of Education, is responsible for employing teachers in Ghana, especially, the
Basic School teachers. Teachers form a huge fraction of the employed. One fact
remains that anybody who has a white collar job, is a direct beneficiary of the
teacher. If you can read and write today, then you owe it to some teacher. Have
you ever had the experience of an illiterate passing on a mobile phone to you,
just for you to choose and dial a number with a certain name for them? Have you
seen how you enjoy social media? Can an illiterate enjoy Tiktok or Facebook or
Twitter like you? Of course the teacher is amazing! Don’t you think so? Just
see how our President, Ministers, MPs and other literates deliver speeches
every day with ease. The teacher taught them all.
As a JHS teacher, I think about the situation of teachers
in Ghana and I weep every day. First of all, let me talk about the meagre
salary of the teacher. People have always said that the reward of the teacher
is in heaven. I don’t dispute that, however, the umbrella cannot stop the rain
but it can let you stay in the rain. Many thanks does not fill the stomach. As
the teacher wakes up and baths every day to school, and closes 2:30pm, his
average monthly salary is GH? 2000.00. By simple division, the teacher’s daily
mark is GH?67.00. Even though teachers are as calm as a cold bottle of beer,
they are rooted into multiple loans just to live up to expectation. The
Ghanaian teacher is virtually nothing without loan. In fact, if you see the
payslips of teachers, you will go blank. It is simply lachrymose. The debt situation
of the Ghanaian teacher is so grave that hardly does a teacher get the ability
to own a complete house even after pension. Let nobody think that it is financial
indiscipline that kills the teachers, because you can’t climb trees to catch
fish. I am sure you won’t discuss your malaria illness with the mosquito.
Now, let’s look at the inconsistencies in salary. Can
you fathom that a teacher who crosses three rivers to school, to a remote area
without internet access and Electricity, takes the same salary as a teacher in
a city with full dose of internet and Electricity? That is the case for the
Ghanaian teacher. A teacher in the city has numerous opportunities than the
village teacher. Sometimes you leave your community and travel to a village where
even good food is a problem, yet you are regular and punctual. The city teacher
has side business that fetches him money. The city teacher rarely goes to
school regularly, but at the end of the day, same salary. I am not opining that
some category of teachers should be punished, but what appreciation is there
for very industrious teachers and teachers who work in deprived communities? In
fact, some teachers have distinguished themselves so much that a day’s absence from
school, amounts to grief for students and disaster for the entire school.
Without them, the school cannot just function. Hmm! These special teachers are
everywhere but nobody identifies and rewards them. With time, they will surely
rust, trust me.
With all this bitterness of the Ghanaian teacher, the
GES and perhaps the government has not helped matters; If I am not economical
with the truth. In this 21sth century, GES appreciates a lazy teacher whose
lesson notes are up-to-date than a hardworking teacher who has no lessen notes.
What is this? For five years now, All BECE candidates get placement to good
schools with their poor grades. Basically, once you sit for the BECE exams, you
are qualified to proceed to SHS no matter your aggregate. And to make matters
worse, they go free even with the failure. So if all JHS graduates must go to
SHS with whatever results, what is the essence of the BECE? Why waste money to
set, mark and release results as if there is selection for promotion? Someone
who gets aggregate 48 plus, you tell that child, to go to SHS free. What
product will such a child become? And now, our SHS teachers are battling with
students who can’t even read? What policy is this? At the JHS level, there is massive indiscipline
because the students have realised that they don’t need you-the teacher, to
pass and go to SHS. After all, they will get a SHS to attend. So they now see
learning as a disturbance. As I speak to you, Basic schools are still in despair
as to how they can implement a so-called adopted Common Core Curriculum because
there are no textbooks.
I think we don’t need glass eyes to tell us that the
Education System of Ghana is collapsing, and if nothing is swiftly done, the
future is bleak.
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