The debate on whether it is rational, economical, or efficient for government to continue paying Teacher Trainee allowances and feeding continue unresolved.
Yet, the recent cry by the trainees over the unpaid allowances for the past seven months has awaken the call for a proper review and analysis of the scheme and whether it has outlived its intended purpose over years.
According to the National President of the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG), Mr. Jonathan Dzunu, the government currently owes students in the second to fourth year, 7 months’ allowance while the first years have also not been paid for the past 3 months.
Given that there are 46 training colleges in the country with an average of 1,200 students in each of these institutions, it suffices for the purpose of analysis to estimate that there are approximately 300 students in each level.
As such, at the end of every month, a teacher trainee in any of the 46 training colleges takes homes GH¢400, a little lower than GH¢559.04 paid to National Service Personnel who are serving the nation and currently contributing to the country’s GDP.
Now, If the government decides to clear the seven months’ arrears owed the trainees in L200 to L400, government will be expected to part ways with GH¢115, 920, 000. Additionally, government will require GH¢16, 560, 000 to clear the three months’ arrears owed students in the first year. Together, government will need GH¢132, 480, 000 to clear the arrears of the trainees.
The swift response from the Ministry of Education to release about GH¢67 million to pay feeding arears of trainees sent a signal that government has the capacity to meet the wage demands of other unions.
This will further create room for more strikes actions over unmet labor demands. For instance, on April 21, 2022, the Civil and Local Government Staff Association, Ghana (CLOGSAG) declared a strike over the government’s failure to pay its members their neutrality allowance.
Considering government’s commitment to this policy, it will require GH¢264, 960, 000 to pay these Teacher Trainees each year, all things being equal. As of now, government spends about GH¢19, 200 on each of the trainees as allowance and feeding support at the end of their 4 years’ academic pursuit.
Rationale for the introduction of the Allowance
Teacher trainee allowance was first introduced in the 1960s by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as a way of attracting more people into the teaching profession. The policy was however, scraped in the 1970s but was reinstated in the 1980s following the mass exodus of Ghanaian teachers to Nigeria.
Fast forward, the policy was replaced with a tertiary student loan in 2012, with one of the reasons being that government no longer have resources to continue payment of monthly teacher trainee allowances.
The conditions that existed in 2012 when the policy was reviewed are not entirely different from the current challenges facing all economies across the globe. COVID-19’s devastating impacts on government resources are currently being exacerbated by low revenue mobilization and increasing debt. Ghana’s fiscal deficit for 2021 was equivalent to 9.7 percent of GDP, above the target of 9.4 percent of GDP.
As of now, Ghana’s stock of public debt stood at GH¢351.8 billion at the end of December 2021, accounting for 80.1 percent of GDP. Based on this figure, each Ghanaian citizen owes about GH¢11, 422.08, based the country’s population of 30.8 million, according to GSS’s estimates.
Meanwhile, interest payments on the country’s debt continue to rise due to higher risks of default as the sovereign’s debt was assessed by Bloomberg to be moving deeper into distress. An ActionAid report revealed that Ghana spent nearly 7 percent of its GDP to service debt between 2016-2020. This calls for stringent measures to cut down on expenditure, especially, on some of the social interventions that beneficiaries have the ability to cater to.
Converting trainee allowances into a student loan scheme
Restructuring the trainee allowances into a student loan scheme, as provided to other tertiary institutions in the country, and equipping the Teachers’ Trainee Colleges with better amenities, will better serve an optimum use of the monies than just giving out as an allowance and feeding support.
Many proponents to this call have made similar suggestions in the past considering the huge cost it bears on the country. One of such is the President of IMANI Center for Policy & Education, Mr. Franklin Cudjoe, who once said that “Let people take loans and pay back, that is what we all did when we went to the university. I don’t see why I should be feeding grown up people wanting to be teachers and at the same time giving them money for attendance. I don’t think that is a good use of our money; either scrap or reorder the payment of these allowances through the private means”.
Teachers’ Training Colleges across the country have been known to have significant infrastructural deficit owing to their new status from diploma to degree awarding institutions. As such it behooves on government to provide a facelift that befits the new status of the Training colleges as a full-fledged Tertiary institution.
However, the continuous provision of the allowances and feeding support will deny the government the requisite finances to embark on the massive transformation required to transform these training colleges that restores “to our Teachers the honour and respect they once held as the source of enlightenment at all levels of society”.
Creating an equal playing field for all tertiary students
Given a level playing field as a tertiary institution to access student loan, it will save some resources and also ease the pressure on government finances as fiscal difficulties continue to mount.
Despite increasing risks of default on student loans, as depicted by a rise in the provision for bad debts to GH¢3,987,786 in 2020 from GH¢2,810,534 in 2019, according to the 2020 Audited Financial Statement of the Students Loan Trust Fund, at least government is able to recover majority of the loans disbursed. This minimizes the burden on the government whilst creating opportunities for needy students to assess funds for their education.
Comparing the bad debts accrued from Students loan to the annual expenditure on the Trainees allowance, Government better saves its purse of over GH¢260, 000, 000 for other developmental projects.
Aside creating fiscal space, converting the allowance into a student loan scheme will create an equal playing field for all tertiary students, since they are all being awarded degree certificates at the end of their course.
The GH¢264,960,000 spent on trainees each year, can also be used to expand infrastructure in the various teacher training colleges so as to create space for the enrollment of more trainees to bridge the high teacher-student ratio at the basic school levels.
According to ActionAid, the average national teacher-student ratios are 32:1, 31:1, 15:1, 20:1 and 27:1 for pre-primary, primary, junior high, secondary, and tertiary levels of education, respectively. This is way above the 15:1 global threshold for pre-primary and primary levels and the 13:1 for senior high and tertiary levels.
However, if government insist on continuing to pay teacher trainees allowances, then to ensure fairness in the system, all tertiary institutions must be given allowances since all are eligible to contribute to the growth of the economy after school.
To ensure that the right people with passion for the teaching profession are attracted to teacher training colleges, government should consider scrapping the allowance, and instead create space to enroll more students to churn out passionate teachers that will impact knowledge into the younger generation that holds the future of this nation.
READ ALSO: We Appreciate The Prompt Response By Gov’t- Accra College of Education Principal
