An Open Letter To The President. Restore The Allowance Of Teacher Trainees!

Mr. President, greetings from the teacher trainees of Ghana. Your administration of late is under much pressure especially due to the worsening condition of our economy and the 'Dumsor Dumsor', I hope you are managing. Hope your cabinet ministers; especially the heads of the Education ministry are all well.

Your Excellency, almost two years ago, you scrapped off the allowance of future teachers. Reasons you gave for scrapping the allowance were;

1. To allow more intake of students in the various colleges of education across the country.

2. Colleges of education has earned a tertiary status, so just as it is done in the various tertiary institutions, loans rather than allowances are given ,so the same must apply.

Very thoughtful of you Mr. President, but I bet to disagree with you! Teacher Trainees were given allowances as a 'special incentive' to attract more people to the teaching profession. Now in Ghana, teachers are needed in every corner of the country to educate our dear little ones. Scrapping off the allowance under the guise of more student intake has done more harm than good to the country. How can a government want to take more students than usual if the government has not put in place adequate infrustural development i.e. expanding dining halls building more halls of residence, building more classrooms etc. This is certainly not right! Since the scrapping of the allowance, some colleges of education still maintain their usual intake of students because there are no halls of residence for students to lay their heads and no classroom to study. Due to this, some principals have decided to take the usual proportion of students each year, and so the reason to scrap the allowance based on having more student intake each year, is defeated!

Scrapping the allowance has made life unbearable for students! Teacher trainees are paying not less than 2,000Ghana cedis yearly. Now the cost of going to the college of education is more expensive than that of going to the universities to earn a degree. Some students have been forced to withdraw since they are unable to pay their fees. It is noteworthy to state that majority of students in the colleges of education are from rural communities where some of their parents are living in poverty. Since when did attending a college of education become so expensive! Sometimes I personally advise people not to enter the college because of the sufferings we are going through!

Mr. President, upon various dialogues with stake holders in our education, you introduced the feeding grant as a replacement of our allowance. This 'special incentive' is not enough! Receiving 500gh cedis a semester is not enough as compared to the amount of money we pay! This feeding grant does not come on time. It comes on yearly basis. But as the saying goes, 'Half a loaf is better than none', I will entreat you to do more to make the teaching profession attractive in the country.

Your Excellency, to your claim of the colleges of education attaining a tertiary status, yes it has, but it is a 'Tertiary with a difference!' A tertiary with a difference in the sense that, it is restricted in many ways compared to our universities( we take exeat when going out, pay huge sum of money as fees every semester, do most of school labour ourselves whiles 'pure' tertiary institutions hire labourers to do virtually everything for them). And so we cannot compare ourselves fully as tertiary because we are with a difference. Yet all these training help us to be disciplined so we can teach our younger brothers and sisters. Scrapping our allowance is killing us financially!

Mr. President, there is one thing in this country that I lament over, which is our inability to carry out research into issues and policies we implement, and even if researches are conducted, implementing the recommendations of researchers become a problem! The question is, WAS ANY RESEARCH CONDUCTED BEFORE THE SCRAPPING OF THE ALLOWANCE? Certainly No! If proper research was conducted, our allowances wouldn't have been scrapped, instead it would have been increased! Let us not play with our educational policies because every nation depends on its human resource to develop!

To end it here Mr. President, I believe your government is a listening government. Listen to the plight of our future teacher. I believe you will.

Greetings to your family! Have a reflective Easter Season!

Yours faithfully,
Douglas Peters,
(A CONCERNED TRAINEE).
0240810989