The National Teaching Council (NTC) has debunked assertions by the flagbearer of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama that the council suspended the teacher licensure examinations due to political pressure.
John Mahama at a town hall meeting in Kumasi on Tuesday, September 15, 2020, suggested that the Akufo-Addo government is implementing policies in the NDC’s 2020 manifesto including the cancellation of the teacher licensure exam.
“The NPP seems to be implementing some of the policies captured in our manifesto. Recently, they revealed that consultations have begun to review the law banning the activities of okada riders. Similarly, the teacher licensure exam has been suspended after we promised to cancel it in our manifesto.”
“In the same vein, owners of private schools are being engaged after we promised to extend the coverage of the free SHS policy to such schools in deprived areas without government’s free SHS. Even though they accused us of not thinking through our promises, the NPP is implementing them”.
But the Public Relations Officer of the National Teaching Council, Dennis Osei-Owusu, in a Citi News interview on the matter, said the exam was postponed to 1st and 2nd October due to changes in the timetable of continuing students of Colleges of Education.
“The licencing process or the examination has not been cancelled just that we postponed it from the original date which is 1st and 2nd October. I don’t think whatever is in the news is true. There has not been any suspension as far as the exams are concerned. The information out there that it has been suspended indefinitely, is totally false. The whole thing is we just postponed it for just a week.”
“This is as a result of changes in the timetable of the continuing students at the colleges of education. Initially, they would have finished by 25 September, so we can also start ours, but they wrote a petition to their awarding institutions to the effect that they need a week more to revise, so they had to change their timetable which affected ours too.”
