By Kofi Ashiboe-Mensah, PhD.
Accra, July 11, GNA – While the selection into the teaching career and teachers’ initial education are key to ensuring that teachers are capable and ready for their work, initial preparation alone cannot equip them for professional challenges.
The Genesis
This notwithstanding, candidates admitted into the colleges of education and other tertiary teacher education institutions must first of all choose and give the profession high regard and not as a spring board to enter other professions.
Colleges and universities, have the responsibility to produce high performing teachers through quality education in pedagogy and content knowledge for pre-tertiary education.
To deliver quality education in schools, teachers are to be equipped with knowledge, skills and experiences to enter the classrooms with confidence and professionalism.
Thus, a knowledgeable and competent teacher is the most desirable to lift up the gains of Ghana’s educational system by producing quality graduates for the ultimate transformation of the economy.
Why teacher education?
One of the objectives of the teacher education is to improve learning outcomes of teacher-trainees through the implementation of suitable policies to discover new ways by which they can become professional teachers.
This necessitates the improvement of quality teaching force through initial and continuing professional development which include licensure examination. Section 58 (1) of Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023), established the National Teaching Council (NTC) as a corporate body to regulate the teaching profession.
According to Section 60 (j) of the Act, the NTC shall conduct licensure examinations for prospective teachers and license them after completing teacher education.
First Examination
So, in September, 2018, the first licensure examination took place. The result of this examination and subsequent ones were not known, except for the current one, which was written in May 2023 and organized by the NTC.
The results indicated that 6,451 teachers, representing 83.5% failed the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE) with only 1,277 (16.5%) passes.
This mass failure received backlashes from various stakeholders with each of them making comments as to what contributed to the failure sparking conversations on the quality of teachers produced by these tertiary institutions.
Why exams?
According to the NTC, this examination was for re-sitters, thus, each of the failed candidates had written the examinations more than once with some writing it for the ninth time.
Not knowing the causes of the failures, the President of the Teacher-Trainees Association of Ghana promised to engage his colleagues to investigate the challenges that led to the mass failure.
However, in a response, one of the candidates in a radio interview attributed the failure to the fact that the examination questions did not reflect what the candidates studied at school.
Per the response, one may wish to know the kind of education the candidates had in their various colleges and universities.
So, the question is, did they revise their notes before going into this examination? And if they did, what did they learn?
Testimony
An interview with a candidate who passed the examination, indicated that for anyone to pass the examination, the candidate must revise notes of the basic and senior high schools and at the colleges and universities.
He said some of his colleagues started learning for the examination three days to the time.
Another teacher who also passed the examination three years ago, revealed that the content for numeracy included the five domains of mathematics, namely; numbers, algebra, measurement, geometry and data.
In the case of literacy, the candidates were examined on comprehension, grammar and essay writing (formal and informal letter and article writing).
Essential skills centred on the practicality of the profession, where candidates were required to respond to questions on classroom management and administration, pedagogical skills, and educational psychology among others.
Nonetheless, every prospective teacher who studied at a tertiary institution must have the required knowledge, skills and attitude to navigate and demonstrate prowess during the licensure examination.
Why failures?
The NTC mentioned inability of the candidates to write clearly for the examiners to read and/or understand, candidates’ failure to understand the questions and respond to them appropriately, incapacity of candidates to exhibit comprehension and essay writing skills, and incorrect spelling of words among others.
Following this revelation, the NTC in one of its responses, said candidates from the universities recorded the high percentage of failures in the examination.
Without further interrogations, the universities, especially the teacher education institutions must take interest in finding out the veracity of this claim and provide scientific reasons.
Another school of thought suggested that the failure were due to the IMF conditionality on employment which have been imposed on the country.
Some candidates said they did well but were deliberately failed because the government was constrained in employing them if they passed.
On the contrary, professional teachers are not only meant for the public schools but also for the private schools.
In any case, private school teachers are not exempted from acquiring a professional teaching license. This is where government must support private school owners, so that they can pay their teachers well just as was done in other jurisdictions.
Another angle
Another school of thought asked the question as to what the Ministry of Education, Ghana Education Service and National Teaching Council have been doing to improve teacher preparation and provision of relevant learning materials for the licensure examinations.
This means that the failure of the candidates may be the result of these institutions not providing the necessary syllabuses with other learning materials to the candidates.
Candidates cannot at this point claim that they did not have the content knowledge hence their failure as they have completed their programmes in various disciplines from the colleges and universities. However, there are learning materials available from sources known to the candidates if only they are willing to pass the examination.
Secret?
It is an open secret that people go into the teaching profession because there is an allowance attached to it and there is readily available job after completion.
With this idea, even if one is not cut out for the profession, he/she would like to enter the college of education just to alleviate funding and job search difficulties.
Security threat?
According to the NTC, mass failure is a national security threat especially to our educational system because the disappointed teachers later in their lives may indulge in some vices if they become frustrated.
Advisably, this calibre of people may choose to redirect their energies to other professions where they can perform better.
These candidates have completed the required credit hours, passed all the prescribed courses at their various tertiary institutions and sat for the GTLE to acquire a professional license, only for them to fail, which is embarrassing.
However, there are genuine teachers who failed the examination, perhaps due to inappropriate exploratory and learning skills, deserved to be helped on the various areas through professional development programme, which will support them to pass the examination.
Graduate teachers, do not need syllabus to write basic essay without spelling mistakes, solving simple arithmetic problems and be knowledgeable in basic education psychology and classroom management.
“For example, a candidate does not need a syllabus to go for an interview for a job, rather it is the candidates’ responsibility to explore widely to get information and prepare possible questions that will be asked in the interview”.
According to Prof. Adei, formerly of Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), if teachers are asking for areas to learn before they can pass the examination, then they are not qualified to be in the classroom.
Quality
As we need the right calibre of people in our classrooms, we cannot afford to compromise on quality. In one of his interviews, Prof. Adei stated that all teachers should be sacked and the services of head teachers be engaged for them to recruit their own teachers.
However, some teachers descended on him and called him names as though the Professor knows next to nothing.
Now, the Professor has been vindicated by these expositions.
Can we now chart a new path in our discourse in order to ensure quality education?
Implications
The results show that the majority of the candidates are not ready to be teachers and that they just want to explore the system.
According to Adegoke (2003), the desire for the teaching profession is one of the factors that changes the educational landscape.
In his thesis for the award of a doctorate degree, Ashiboe-Mensah (2021) indicates that only 34.9% of teacher-trainees said that the teaching profession was their first choice whilst the remaining 65.1% mentioned other professions such as Medicine (21.9%), Accounting (10.3%), and Engineering (16.2%) Security (10.3%) and others (3.9%).
The implication is that most of these teacher-trainees may be using the teaching profession as a stepping stone to venture into their preferred professions, hence will not be totally committed to the job.
Accordingly, the teacher with strong disciplined knowledge and sound disposition towards teaching is the most important variable affecting student performance (Hattie, 2009).
This means that teachers may therefore, be in the classrooms without their hearts and minds which affect teaching and learning.
If candidates are to be admitted into the colleges of education or other teacher education institutions, they must be rigorously screened to weed out those who do not have the teaching profession at heart.
It will not be farfetched that the 1,277 candidates who passed the examination are the qualified teachers who are committed to the profession.
The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Mr. Kofi Asare, stated that the mass failure was a good omen for pre-tertiary education because unqualified teachers would now be separated from the classrooms due to teacher licensing.
The Author is a Quality Assurance Officer at Ho Technical University
GNA