Breaking: Pupils boycott classes, demonstrate over lack of teachers at Central Region

Pupils boycott classes, demonstrate over lack of teachers at Central Region…What happened to leadership, proactiveness, and desire to be efficient and not merely being effective at the GES?

The news that pupils have boycotted classes and staged a demonstration over lack of teachers does not come as a surprise. There have been several news items in the past few years indicating that there are schools that lack teachers or do not have the required number of teachers which compels the few teachers at post to merge and teach two or more classes together.

Managing education at the Pre-tertiary level in Ghana has become an eyesore for many years with particular emphasis on the unavailability of teachers to teach in schools located in deprived areas and villages. One wonders how long it takes for such information to reach those in leadership and how proactive they are in resolving such issues. Again, the unwillingness of teachers to take up roles in such areas cannot be overlooked in attempting to find a lasting solution to the problem.

Due to a teacher shortage, students at Breman Essuokor D/A Basic School in the Central Region’s Asikuma Odobeng Brakwa District have boycotted classes and threatened to shut the school. Over a hundred of these outraged students marched along Breman Essuokor Street, wearing red bands on their heads and waving placards expressing their concerns, in a demonstration to warn community opinion leaders to push harder for them to obtain teachers.

These outraged pupils informed EIB Network Central Regional Correspondent Yaw Boagyan that the entire school only has one instructor that teaches Junior High School from JHS one to JHS three, which does not encourage outstanding teaching and learning. They said that they had sent repeated letters asking teachers to the Asikuma Odobeng Brakwa District Education Officer and the Parents Teachers Association (PTA), but that their efforts had been in vain. The pupils claimed that if the government does not supply them with teachers within one week, they would all stop attending school and start schooling a new district.

How can a school have only one teacher and the GES has not taken steps to beef up staff in the school? What kind of 21st-century education management system are we practicing in this country? Trained teachers are at home doing nothing all because, they are yet to pass a certain teacher licensure examination hence, they will not be posted. At the same time, there are schools scattered across the country that need the services of teachers. Education should make the managers of our education sector providers of workable solutions instead of entrenched persons in unproductive bureaucratic processes that are wasteful and annoying.

This move by the learners is an insult to those in leadership who have not taken proactive steps to provide teachers for effective teaching and learning in all schools facing similar challenges.

READ: GES to meet school heads over mandatory writing of lesson notes

This news “Pupils boycott classes, demonstrate over lack of teachers at Central Regions” must be treated with care by the managers of education. It is hoped that the GES does not go looking for teachers and the headteacher of the school as scapegoats instead, it will do the needful to ensure teachers are posted to the school immediately.