Teacher Shortage in Afram Plains: Education Director appeals for more teachers

In the recent Ghana Education News, Kwahu Afram Plains North District located in the Eastern Region of Ghana is in teacher shortage and is in dire need of teachers to ensure smooth teaching and learning.

At the moment, there are 189 basic and pre schools in the district. These schools hold about 16,000 pupils with only 454 teaching staff.

However, the district, due to its number of schools is supposed to have 1,066 teachers or if better, a ratio of 1 teacher: 14 students to achieve effective learning in the district.

Even though the teacher to student ratio currently is 1 teacher to 35 students, the distribution of these teachers is uneven.

For example, apart from the schools being very far each other (15 km in some cases), there are some schools which hold 200 plus students with only 3 teachers.

Senafukope D/A KG and Primary School in the district houses 248 students with only two teaching staff.

While some students come from the nearest communities, some also come as far as 12 kilometers away.

There are 80 kindergarten schools in the district, with 79 teachers, made up of 31 males and 48 lady teachers teaching the kindergarten students while there are 234 teachers handling the primary school .

At the JHS level, subject teachers are required to be in 29 schools, but only 141 teachers are posted to these Schools.

This information came to light when a UNICEF team paid a visit to the district to assess how it’s project called Community of Excellence Program (CEO) were being executed.

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The CEP, which is worth $2.3 million from the Zurich-based philanthropic organisation, the Jacobs Foundation, seeks to promote quality education in hard-to-reach areas in Ghana, Ivory Coast and Colombia.

The CEP, being implemented by the Ghana Education Service (GES), focuses on the training of teachers, parent teacher associations, the school management committees as well as the district education oversight committees on their respective roles in ensuring better learning outcomes.

While the District Director of Education, Solomon Akuruko Azubila, addressed the issue, he made a plea to newly trained teachers to accept postings to those areas.

He explained that most of the teachers posted to the Afram Plains North District declined and re applied for a new posting, describing the posting and the area as unpatriotic.

“I am appealing to every Ghanaian. So far as you are a teacher, when your country calls, you have no option but to accept, especially the newly trained ones.”

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“The hinterlands are part of Ghana and so for a meaningful progress to be attained, we need a holistic development,” Mr Azubila told journalists.

He said currently, the Education Directorate of the district had no option but to engage 72 community teaching assistants (CTA), who were being paid between GH¢250 and GH¢300 monthly by the parent-teacher association (PTA) in the respective schools.

The District Director of Education said it was sad to see that in some schools, only two teachers manned all the classes from primary one to six “and in some places just one teacher is made to run the whole school”.

He explained that when he assumed office four years ago, after needs assessment, “we realised that we were operating on half strength and so, we had to embark on community engagement to plead with the communities to engage these CTAs.”

He also explained that to ensure that quality was not compromised, the directorate organised in-service training programmes for teachers and all the CTAs were also invited to participate.

Mr Azubila thanked the UNICEF team for choosing the district for the CEP, explaining that the interventions by the programme had really uplifted education in the district.

He explained that it was the training programmes by the UNICEF that enlightened the PTA and the SMC to become more involved in the running of their respective schools, including the engagement of the CTAs.

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