This year, the Ministry of Education (MoE) is spending over GHC 162 million cedis on the payment of allowances for 52,000 teacher trainees (2018 Budget Statement).
The reason for spending such a colossal amount in an economy where schools still exist under trees defies policy sense.
Government believes there is the need to motivate teacher trainees when in school, and possibly attract more trainees.
However, the economics of teacher deployment suggests that enrolment into Colleges of Education did not decline even when the allowance was scrapped some years back.
It actually went up. Furthermore, the supply of teachers far outstrips the demand; therefore one wonders the driver of such a policy. Based on this, the obvious rationale for the policy is a political promise.
In my article on financing secondary education, I mentioned that the biggest problem confronting the education sector is that, the reasons behind education policies are political rather than educational.
The teacher trainee allowance is another classic example.
Civil Society has since 2007 expressed consistent and vehement opposition to the policy of paying teacher trainees for the following reasons:
- Teaching and nursing happen to be one of the few professional classes in Ghana where jobs are readily guaranteed after completing training college. The guaranteed placement for trainees after completing college is enough motivation for one to enroll in a College of Education.
- Colleges of Education are tertiary institutions and must be allowed to access student loans just like polytechnics and universities do. There is no need to discriminate between the privileges of diploma students in polytechnics and same in Colleges of Education.
- No serious country pays teachers to go to school. In fact, prospective teachers rather justify their inclusion into training to become teachers after licensing. One would not be wrong to insinuate that, in recent times, the greatest motivation to become a teacher is to get paid while in school and be assured a job immediately after graduation, and not necessarily to become a professional teacher to develop children into literates, numerates and critical thinkers.
In September, the MoE will be running a double track system in over 400 Senior High Schools partly due to lack of funds to undertake timely infrastructural expansion projects in secondary schools.
The financial gap is so high that, MoE has decided to securitize the GETFund to secure a US$1.5 billion loan to develop school infrastructure.
Why then would a cash-strapped ministry spend as much as GHC 162 million (US$ 33 million) annually as allowances for teacher trainees? What is the case for Value for Money?
I conclude by urging the MoE to scrap the teacher trainee allowance policy and replace it with a student loan scheme, just like any tertiary institution.
The annual savings of GHC 162 million can build about 400 [six unit class room blocks] each year and help to eliminate schools under trees. Let’s think Ghana first and use scarce resources very prudently!
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By: Kofi Asare, a citizen of Ghana.
Email: performghana@gmail.com