Hiding behind licensing teachers to execute unfriendly policies

By Owusu Baffoe Daniel

We were made to believe that teacher licensing was the best option until I came across this:

*"All newly recruited teachers will have to be licensed before they will be allowed to teach"*_ in a reportage.

I became so sad after reading the full report on licensing of teachers which is to start from 2016/2017 academic year, upon realising that 2016/2017 academic year has already begun.

These particular set of newly trained teachers have been the most harshly treated batch of teachers.

They were denied trainees allowances forcing them to access loans and making them debtors, their school fees was the highest ever recorded in history forcing many to be school drop-outs, many were sacked for getting a number of referrals which UCC itself has not sacked its regular students for same reasons, many among these batch risk being posted for failing just a single subject which was not a yardstick for recruiting trained teachers since time memorial.

They paid ghc5 for serial numbers aside internet charges to be posted to regional offices.

Salaries of These 16000+ newly trained teachers for September have been tactically swayed away. The list goes on and on.

The above unbearable conditions being forcefully faced by these teachers has not been the only anti-teacher policies made operationalized under the watch of Prof Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang and the Director General of GES Mr Jacob Kor, and I bet it is never going to be the last.

Under their watch, more than 20,000 pupil teachers were laid off, most of which were denied their salaries which remained unpaid for almost two years before their expungement, salaries of more than 3,000 professional teachers has also remained unpaid for more than two years, as I talk to you now, more than 49,000 teachers don't know their fate about their unpaid salary arrears which has remained outstanding for almost three years.

And all these happenings are being orchestrated easily since teacher unions who are supposed to protect and defend teachers has rather become government unions who have delight in defending government.

I was therefore not surprised when one Dr Tawiah was applauding teacher unions for their immense role in reducing teacher absenteeism. Interestingly, the teacher unions themselves cannot tell the exact role they played which led to the reduction of teachers absenteeism.

Whilst Dr Tawiah was recommending several pragmatic measures as antidote to teacher absenteeism, his doctorate degree couldn't make him realise that teacher/employee satisfaction carries 90% of the solution they are looking for. I was expecting a doctor to recommend balancing of *Declaration of zero tolerance* for teacher absenteeism to *Declaration of zero tolerance to non-payment of teachers*.

How do you expect a teacher who has been posted to "land-of-no-return" to be present all the time whilst you have denied him or her salaries for almost three years?

What at all does leaders of education want from teachers?

Upon all the unbearable treatment, are you not satisfied yet?

So you couldn't reduce the sting than to topple it up?

Licensing of teachers is not a bad thing to do though, but GES has not shown any commitment for teachers fate to be entrusted into their hands. How can an office who cannot work on just 60,000 documents be allowed to work on more than 200,000 documents?

Who is going to pay for the license fee at this time no license in Ghana is being given freely?

If licensing of teachers is the best option, why not license all government workers? Are teachers guinea pigs to be used for pilot testing anytime government is introducing a new policy?

I am waiting for the day one teacher union will rise and say "enough is enough". Until then, the likes of deputy Minister of education Alex Kyeremeh will continue to take unmerited credit for reducing teachers absenteeism from 27% to 7% whilst teachers continue to shed tears day and night.