The Ga West Zonal Chairman of the National Association of Graduate Teachers’ (NAGRAT) and the representative for the Campaign Against Privatization and Commercialization of Education(CAPCOE), Richard Kwashie Kovey, has said the government is playing with teachers in the country.
He said the concerns of teachers are handled in an arbitrary manner.
Mr Kovey intimated that teachers are not happy doing their work in the country and that they are angry with the government because there is no joy nor motivation in the teaching profession.
He said the CAPCOE was formed in 2015 when NAGRAT realized that successive governments have been taking loans and grants from multinational companies to draw their budgets, which forces them to privatize and commercialize the educational system in Africa, including Ghana.
He said NAGRAT had hoped that if a new government comes into power the situation will change with teachers and the educational system in the country but that they have realized that the situation is still the same even when there is a change in government.
Mr Kovey pointed out that in 2018 the government introduced what they called the Ghana Partnership Schools (GPS) under the Private Partnership in Education (PPE) where the government sought to partner with private actors in the educational sector by providing a GHC10 grant for every child per term in the Basic schools.
He said after the private partnership in education the government pays GHC1000 per the head of every child for management only without maintenance from that amount by just forming an education management consortium to go for such grants for running schools in the country.
Mr Kovey pointed out that when NAGRAT and all the educational unions in the country got a hint of this deal with the government and the private companies, the initiative was suspended.
He alleges that after the government suspended that one-sided initiative then the education system in the country became worse just to prove that the public sector cannot manage the educational system in the country by denying them the needed means to manage the schools.
Mr Kovey in an interview with Yaa Titi Okrah on the Pae Mu Ka program on Onua FM, Monday, August 16, said that these shortfalls have made teaching unattractive to teachers and very abhorrent to the students in the country.
He said the government has the responsibility to improve the educational system in the country just like they will develop it if their children attended the same schools as the wards of the country’s poor citizens do in the country.
Mr Kovey charged that when the government is planning for the education of the children in the country, they must plan for the accommodation and the upgrade of the teachers in the country as well.
“The government is playing with teachers in the country, that is why nothing good is coming from that sector. We have to create equal opportunities for all but not the selected few. The level where GES has reached we shouldn’t be facing these problems in the educational sector in the country”, he charged.
By Barima Kwabena Yeboah|3news.com|Ghana