The Rot in Ghana’s Education System – MAJOR ONE Asseverate.

Caution: Readers’ discretion is strictly required, for, after all, discretion is the better part of valour. Please note that it will be your funeral if you ignore this warning and go ahead to uncomplimentary comment.

Such antics from you, irrespective of your socioeconomic and political standing, will be tantamount to the declaration of verbal war, which I will respond to with equal measure, and persecute it with undiminished intensity until you are finally forced to capitulate on my terms. Thank you.
Now read on:
Ahead of the 2024 elections in Ghana, when the sworn political opponents of the governing party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) that is the New Patriotic Party (NPP), went about ‘preaching’ that a vote for the former would mean the free Senior High School (SHS) will be cancelled, some of us described such campaign messages as mere propaganda tools to hoodwink the electorate into voting for them with the view to breaking the so-called ‘Eight’.

Now, the NPP stand vindicated to a larger extent! Where on earth, can any right thinking homo sapiens truncate the services of trained subject teachers in the middle or midst of a semester or better still, an academic year?
As has been the professional educational practice over the years, when a new academic year is about to take off, Heads of SHS and for that matter, all educational institutions, inquire from the various Heads of Departments (HODs) the vacancies that exist are likely to .occur, as a result of vacation of post, study leave, transfers, releases, infirmity, compulsory retirement by staff members, etc with the view to finding their replacements before the following school (academic) year begins. All these are factored in, in the planning of the teaching timetable (which of course is a tedious exercise) for over seventy (70) classes.

That of this academic year was done in 2024 ahead of the December, 2024 elections and all these were running smoothly until the very vindictive group of politicians emerged to scuttle all these thereby putting the lives of innocent students in jeopardy.

The question is, now that all the teachers who were assigned to the various classes to teach have been effectively sacked, who are going to teach the innocent students they have left in the classrooms?/ Are those behind the order expecting the teachers who were not affected by that fortuitous or supererogatory release (that revoked the appointments and recruitments of the affected teachers), to be very candid to accept the new classes and add them to those that they had officially been assigned to? Even if on humanitarian grounds they decide reluctantly to take those additional responsibilities, what is the guarantee that the new classes will not be in conflict with their existing schedules? What is very distasteful to the hilt among others is that a whole Acting Director of Education did not appreciate or recognize this obvious challenge and appropriately convince the ignorant not to extend the directive to the educational sector.

The students of the three year groups are already shortchanged as a result of the unfavourable academic schedules initiated and implemented by the erstwhile Akufo-Addo-led administration.

If any of these new teachers were assigned to the final year classes to teach, can anyone estimate the devastating effect of the revocation of appointments and recruitments in terms of the preparation of the candidates for their final examination? Without mincing words, the directive from the government was simply unnecessary against the background that the candidates have barely five months to sit their final external examination. The least said about the year two students, the better.

These students went down and stayed in the house for nearly four months and as they were about to settle down to make up for the academic or contact hours lost, they have been dealt with yet another unexpected and unpleasant blow following the useless decision by a group of politicians who are bent on destroying Ghanaian education with gay or reckless abandon.

With the exception of the Coalition Concerned Teachers (CCT) that had made a definite statement about the very disturbing development, I am yet to hear or read from the
Ghana National Association of Teacher’s (GNAT) and the National Association of (Some) Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT). To the NAGRAT President, Mr Angel ‘Seven gods of Agbozome’ Carbonu, his preoccupation is of the paltry 10% upward salary adjustment for all public sector workers.

In fact, I would have wished that the Vice-President and as it just so happens, my lecturer at the University of Coast, Professor *Naana Jane* (not “Jane Naana”) Opoku Agyemang had firmly rejected the move to sack the teachers against the background that she holds the accolade as. the first female Vice-Chancellor of a public university in Ghana and above all, one time Minister of Education, since at the centre of any proper educational planning is the teacher.

Now that the affected teachers have been humiliated and sacked, it behoves the government to ensure that the students who are now stuck in limbo are not shortchanged in terms of their education.

The President in particular, should not lose sight of the fact that he had sworn to protect and defend the 1992 Constitution of Ghana part of which is the *Article 28(4)* which states among others that *”No child shall be deprived by any other person of … education …”*.

Already, the President has breached a number of the provisions of the Ghanaian laws and we would not, repeat not, allow him to pursue or chart that tangent.

The dismissed teachers should be reinstated promptly for the sake of the innocently students!
Thank you for reading.