Quota system, Colleges of Education Admissions and teacher trainees allowance Wahala
The quota system in Colleges of Education has been reintroduced by the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC).
Per the letter directing the various colleges as to the number of applicants they can admit, it was evidently clear that, the quota system was introduced because the government did not see the need to pay so many qualified and admitted students the teacher trainees allowance it reintroduced after winning the 2016 elections.
Stakeholders including the Africa Education Watch have continuously indicated that the Trainee Allowance introduced by the government was a bad policy and a wasteful one for that matter.
The decision by the Mahama led government to replace the teacher trainees allowance with students loans was misunderstood and used as political capital by the then Nana Addo-Bawumia campaign.
Fast-forward to 2022 after the government had tasted the bitter lessons of reintroducing the trainee allowance, it has reintroduced a quota system aimed at indirectly reducing the number of trainees qualifying for the allowance. The payment of the teacher trainee allowance has become a tug of war and a difficult commodity to access for teacher trainees, and very often the allowance have been in areas for several months.
Africa Education Watch has called on government to increase enrolment by allowing students who want to gain admission into Colleges of Education without benefiting from teacher trainees to be allowed to do so. It added that it made no logical sense to improve and increase infrastructure on CoE campuses only to introduce tactics to cut down enrolment.
The Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) has explained the decision to reintroduce the admission quota system at the Colleges of Education in Ghana and says it is as a result of limited infrastructure.
In a letter dated December 16, 2022, it was announced that the quota system for the 46 accredited Public Colleges of Education was being reintroduced for the 2022/2023 academic year.
According to the GTEC, a total of 12,002 prospective teacher trainees are expected to be admitted into the Colleges of Education for the 2022/2023 academic year.
According to the Director General of the GTEC, Professor Mohammed Salifu, physical spaces at the various Colleges of Education are limited due to the running of the four-year system, hence the move to bring back the quota system and cut down on enrolment.
“We planned a programme of physical infrastructural expansion, but the expansion hasn’t kept pace with the progress of the cohort. So as it stands now, physical space is still a little limited. You would have heard that we have hostel projects going on across all the various colleges. While that is ongoing, we have to manage the space we have. That is what informed the decision,” the Director General of GTEC explained.
eanwhile the Member of Parliament for Builsa South, Dr Clement Apaak says the government’s decision to reintroduce the admission quota system was an indication of its inability to pay feeding grants or teacher trainee allowance for all who qualify to train as teachers.
READ: Accra Technical University Fees Schedule & Academic Calendar Out
In. a tweet, Dr Apaak said that was not the case, “A quota system to control the number of students Colleges of Education can admit for the 2022/23 academic year?
“The letter/allocation list attached suggest that govt can’t pay feeding grants/teacher trainee allowance for all who qualify to train as teachers,” the Member of the Education Committee in Parliament tweeted.
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