NAGRAT warns gov’t over teacher licensure exams

• Posted on June 14, 2018
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) is not happy with the National Teaching Council (NTC) for initiating moves to register teachers for the licensure exams.

Reports say teachers are being registered for next month’s exams at a cost of GH¢220 per candidate.

The move is part of a scheme to have all teachers in Ghana licensed.

But speaking in an interview with TV3’s Daniel Opoku on Thursday, NAGRAT’s National President, Eric Angel Carbonu, said: “We see this as a rip-off, absolutely unnecessary.”

He explained that the areas of examination for the teachers have all been covered in the curriculum of colleges of education.

Mr Carbonu said the NTC has yet to even consider the concerns of teacher unions, who form major stakeholders in the rollout of the policy.

He said there are a number of issues that the teacher unions want addressed before the rollout.

“These are issues that ought to be discussed and explained to the NTC but the NTC is trying to go ahead without making sure that the teacher unions make their inputs.”

He said after a complaint was made about the seeming neglect of the views of teacher unions in the recent past, the boss of NTC apologized.

This, he said, forced the Director General of the Ghana Education Service to veto the policy document, promising to provide a cover letter for views of all stakeholders to be incorporated before full rollout.

“What we are seeing now is somebody trying to upstage the exercise,” Mr Carbonu alleged, “somebody in a hurry to push through something to boost his/her ego and we the teacher unions are not going to stand for it.

“We will not allow anybody or institution to fleece an overburdened teacher in this country.”

-3news