The Plight Of The Graduate Teacher

Every individual needs education either FORMAL or INFORMAL irrespective of the sector they find themselves. If people have gone to acquire knowledge and skills with the view to impart to the young ones and end up with all these knowledge and skills getting stucked in their head because of unemployment, then where lies the country's future?

No sector can operate without getting the required level of education. Every country that has reached its highest level never left out well qualified teachers.

Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world ". Ghana is severely affected with high rate of graduate unemployment. According to the 2010 Population and Housing Census by the Ghana Statistical Service, Ghana's population is very youthful. Christian Nevel Bovee said, "Mind unemployed is mind enjoyed".

Although, unemployment is a global problem ,the case of Ghana is quite dilapidated. The number of unemployed graduates has multiplied over the years and by extent, figures obtained from appropriate quarters indicate that there are about 24,000 unemployed graduates in Ghana

and still counting.

This would be of great amazement to many people in Ghana since they know from previous years that, direct graduate teachers are posted to the various Basic and second Cycle institution right after doing their mandatory national service for a year.

The government of Ghana through the Ghana Education Service placed a ban on recruiting graduate teachers since August 20,2013. This ban has come at a time that the country lacks about 17,000 teachers. The ban has worsened the problem of graduate unemployment because graduate teachers cannot access public sector teaching.

Several appeals have been made to the government to lift the ban but all efforts have proved futile.

On Friday February 28,2014,His Excellency President John Dramani Mahama ,on his speech delivered during an interaction with Senior members and the students of University of Education Winneba (UEW) stated that, teacher trainees in the University unlike graduates of other institutions were readily assured of job prospects, considering the huge demands of teachers in the country. He therefore advised the management of UEW to consider training graduates in specialized areas such as Mathematics ,Science ,French and Information Communication Technology (ICT) now that their demand in the teaching field is on the

high side.

On that fateful day,the former Vice Chancellor of the University ,Prof Asabere Ameyaw expressed his worry that ,whilst classrooms in the country had inadequate teachers ,graduate teachers from the university remain on the street without placement so the president

should do something about it.

As at now,no positive development has emanated from it since graduate teachers have not been given placement.

Two equally important issues that terrorizes the provision of quality education in the country are the issue of students-teacher ratio (STR) and contact hours

In 2011/12 academic year,the Student-teacher ratio in the primary School was 29:1. This figure increased In 2012/2013 academic year to 35:1.Due to a hige ratio in 2014/15 academic year, the National Service Secretariat deployed 52% personnel to fill this deficit but most of the personnel deployed did not possess skills in methodology and as a result,the 2015 Basic Education Certificate Examination released in September recorded mass failure.

The major stakeholders of Education have expressed worry to the country's current poor educational standards .

Mr.Sam Akoto Danso ,a principal planning and Special Assistant to the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning presented a dossier to stakeholders at this year's Global Action Month.He disclosed in his speech that ,even those schools where teachers are available,the student -teacher ratio is so high that teaching becomes almost impossible .

A critical case is that of Zuabulga District Assembly Primary School in the Upper East Region ,where a teacher handles 214 pupils.

A similar situation exist in Ahomahoma District Assembly Primary School in the Adansi South district in the Ashanti region and Nkronua District Assembly Primary School in the Central region where one teacher handles 193 and 192 pupils respectively.

Meanwhile ,the Ghana Education strategic Plan (ESP) recommends a Pupil- teacher ratio of 35:1 for primary schools and 25:1 for pre-Junior High and senior High Schools .

School enrollment has however increased from 3.7 million to 4.3million within the past three years but this has not been matched by equal recruitment of teachers.

Currently, a deficit of 17,000 teachers are required to fill this gap. The government have tried to resolve this, that is why he said he has removed College of Education allowance to enable these institutions to admit more people. But the question we should ask ourselves as a country is, why admit more students at College of Education to be used in closing the deficit whereas there are more graduate teachers who are in the house unemployed.

Does it mean that, graduate teachers are not capable of teaching? This, we (unemployed graduate teachers) believe is a total insult to us and the institutions that trained us. Meanwhile these graduate teachers are willing to accept posting to any part of the country .We are therefore appealing to the government to post us just like those who complete public and private Colleges of Education in the country.

As it has been the popular slogan of this current government - we ar listening government, it is our believe that, they will not bring their reputation to disrepute by going against this slogan which might eventually make us resort to the use of demonstrations in the principal streets of the various regional capitals if nothing laudable is done about this situation by 30th October ,2015.

KENNETH GYAMERAH

0245098416

kennethgyamerah52@gmail.com

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