The National Teaching Council (NTC) wants teacher unions whose members are agitated over the payment of fees for the acquisition of their license and renewal to be calm.
This is because the NTC says it is ready to engage with the affected teachers for a possible review of the fees.
Speaking to Citi News, Executive Secretary of the Council, Christian Addae Poku underscored the need for the certification, and indicated that the negotiations will be held to make the teaching profession better.
“NTC is ready to talk to the teacher unions because they are the most important people in this whole situation. If you are professionalizing teachers, the unions represent them. So if teachers have started raising issues, we will look at it. We will all discuss it dispassionately to make sure that licensing is made accessible to every teacher so we do not undervalue our profession. Teaching must be comparable and even better than any other profession in the country.”
In-service teachers across the country have kicked against a GHC 200 fee for the acquisition of the Teacher Professional License.
The teachers, who were in service before the introduction of the licensure exam, are to pay the fees to secure the license.
They will also be paying GHC100 for renewal every two years.
‘We won’t pay a pesewa’ – Teachers fume
But the three Teacher Unions in the country who are protesting the high fees have already asked their members not to pay for the license until they agree on a reasonable amount with the National Teaching Council.
In a Citi News interview after a crunch meeting in Accra, the National President of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Phillipa Larsen, who speaks for the teacher unions maintained that:
“There have been series of meetings where we have started discussions on how much these in-service teachers have to pay for the registration and renewal. These teachers were appointed before 2018 and came through the licensure examinations. So these are issues we have to sit down with the NTC to come out with a figure. At our last meeting, we realized that our inputs were not captured in the document. So we are protesting strongly until we discuss the issue and come to a conclusion on how much in-service teachers should pay. No teacher will pay a pesewa until all the teacher unions come to together to negotiate.”