In the wake of the mass failure by over 80% of trainee teachers who sat for this year’s licensure examination, the Executive Director of the Institute for Educational Studies, Dr. Peter Partey-Anti says the teaching profession deserves the best personnel.
Dr Partey-Anti believes that teaching profession should attract the highest form of human resource because teachers impart knowledge to their pupils and students.
He said this during an interview with Alfred Ocansey on TV3’s Ghana Tonight on Tuesday, June 20, 2023.
The educationist therefore encouraged the authorities of the Colleges of Education in Ghana to keep up with the good work as their 65% performance since the inception of the licensure exam is commendable.
Upon the release of the results, some stakeholders have blamed the Colleges of Education for producing substandard personnel, while others have queried the students for not being studious enough.
Speaking on the possible causes of the high failure rate, Dr Partey-Anti explained that the candidates who sat for the recent teacher licensure examination are not fresh trainees.
According to him, these are candidates who have failed the exam in previous sittings, some as many as 8 times, thus needed to re-sit.
Dr Anti further clarified that the over 6,000 trainees who were unsuccessful, are not yet teachers.
“They now want to enter the teaching profession or classrooms to teach, but mechanisms such as the teacher licensure exam allows us to sieve them.”
Dr Anti noted that, “there is a new law that binds the teaching profession. That after completion of the teacher training schools and colleges, one is supposed to sit for the licensure exams. Gone are the days when just after completion of teacher training school, one is considered a teacher and goes to the classroom to teach”.
He continued that “candidates who pass the licensure exam are only given a provisional license which is valid for a year. So, until one is given the provisional license, you cannot be called a teacher but a teacher trainee. The provisional license given to candidates is only for a year which assesses you into the induction period after which a permanent license can be given out”.
It would be recalled that on Monday, the National Teaching Council of Ghana released the results of the teacher licensure examination this year.
According to the Council, 7,728 candidates sat for the exam out of which 6,481 candidates failed while only 1, 277 candidates passed. The Council blamed the candidates for not taking the examination seriously.
The candidates were examined in three subjects namely; numeracy, literacy and essential professional skills.
By Clara Boadi Konadu|3News TV|3news.com|Ghana