High teacher attrition hampering pupils’ performance – Education Director

The Director of Education for Ningo-Prampram, Mrs Sarah Adobosu, has bemoaned the high attrition rate of teachers within the district which she says is hampering the teaching and learning process.

According to her, the performance of pupils is average compared to their counterparts in other parts of the country but this can be improved if teachers accept to stay.

She explained that due to poor accommodation and other factors such as bad roads, teachers posted to the Ningo-Prampram District refuse to stay thus, reducing the number of teachers to teach pupils.

“The [academic] performance is average, the reason being that I have a lot of rural communities and in those rural communities most often, there is high teacher attrition.

"When the teachers go there, they don’t stay, they move away so we don’t have enough teachers to handle the classes and so we realise that their performance is lower and when we put all together it puts us on the average”, she said.

Mrs Sarah Adobosu added that “decent accommodation is the challenge. I remember some teachers came to me…they are in a village and snakes and other reptiles invade their rooms… electricity is another challenge and the worst is bad roads…”

The Education Director, however, expressed gratitude to the current Regional Directorate of the Ghana Education Service (GES) for sending many newly qualified teachers to the region this year, which she feels would assist raise overall performance above average.

“I thank God this year, the Regional Director has helped so much by giving us newly trained teachers who were posted to the rural communities and I know that by the Grace of God their performance is going to improve’’ she said.

She noted that despite the inability of teachers to stay, there is very little teacher absenteeism because she and other coordinators often pay unannounced visits to schools.

She also mentioned that GES created the “learn to read, read to learn festival” a Spelling Bee and reading program, which aims to pique students’ interest in reading so that they recognize reading as a requirement for learning.

She disclosed that students who perform well will represent the district at the regional competition later in August.