The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) is calling for a national stakeholders’ dialogue to address the issue of teachers failing the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination.
Raising concerns on the heels of an over 80% failure rate in the 2023 examination, GNAT expressed concern that if the situation is not curtailed, it may affect the country’s human capital in the next 18 years.
Speaking in an interview on Eyewitness News on Citi FM, the general secretary of GNAT, Thomas Musah, stressed that the failure will make it impossible for the Ghana Education Service to employ the teachers, which is likely to create teacher shortages.
“It also means that the over 6,000 who failed cannot be employed by the Ghana Education Service specifically, and it also raises concerns about investment because some of these teachers were sponsored by giving them trainee allowance and they have failed.
“Until you have passed the licensure exams, you cannot be employed, and so at this point, it is not possible for the Ghana Education Service to go ahead and employ these people because we had a number of them who failed the exam and were not employed, and so there is a precedent and that precedent cannot be broken at this particular time.”
“The issue requires a national dialogue, and we need to find out what the issue is because we have been here before and it was business as usual, but for me, I don’t think it should be business as usual, and we all need to come together and bring all the regulatory bodies on board to find out what we are not doing right,” Mr. Musah further called for action-oriented solutions.