Dr. Clement Apaak, the Deputy Ranking Member on the Parliament’s Education Committee, has stated that the Minority in Parliament seeks a hearing before the Education Committee of parliament over the widespread failure of teachers in the retake of the license exam in 2023.
The National Teaching Council, various colleges of education and their affiliates, and the Ghana Education Service, according to the Deputy Ranking Member on the Parliament’s Education Committee, should brief the Committee on the underlying causes of the teachers’ failure.
Dr. Clement Apaak, emphasized the importance of including the relevant parties in the failure in order to address the problem.
“The stakeholders in education and the parliamentary sub-committee on education in particular ought to hold a hearing by inviting those charged with preparing teachers which will include the colleges of education, the universities that the various colleges are affiliated to, the National Teaching Council, the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education.
“So that we find out exactly where the problem is and why such a colossal number of teachers failed to pass a licensure exam.”
Dr. Clement Apaak
He expressed worry that a large number of teachers who have not yet started their careers in education are not qualified to use the title “teacher”, as a result of the failure rate of teachers who took the re-sit exams.
The 2023 Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination, which was held in May 2023, saw a total of 6,451 out of 7,728 teachers fail. Additionally, Dennis Osei-Owusu, the National Teaching Council’s (NTC) PRO, stated that the high failure rate of the 2023 Teacher Licensure Examination poses as a “national security threat.”
Eduwatch Demands A Limit On Retakes For The Ghana Teacher Licensure Exam
A limit on the number of times a candidate may take the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination has been demanded by the education think tank; Africa Education Watch.
The National Teaching Council previously disclosed that some of the 6,000 candidates who failed the 2023 resit exam had already taken the test nine times.
The Licensure Examination, according to Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, would guarantee that professional teaching standards are raised.
“The policy is a great one, and it is a means of separating the boys from the men for a want of a better word and ensuring that teachers who do not have the minimum competence to teach even though have their degrees are not allowed to teach.
“Moving forward, I think the National Teaching Council should put a cap on the number of times one can do a resit and I think that the maximum number of resit that should be permissible should be three.”
Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch
The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has also called for a stakeholder meeting to pinpoint gaps and offer solutions to stop the annual repeated failure, which is getting worse over time.
“The issue requires a national dialogue, and we need to find out what is the issue because we have been here before and it was business as usual. But for me, I don’t think it should be business as usual. And we all need to come together and bring all the regulatory bodies on board to find out what it is that we are not doing right.”
GNAT
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