President of the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG), Jephthah Nana Kwame, has called on the government to review the teacher licensure exams.
In an interview on Eyewitness News, he emphasized that the exams written in various schools provide sufficient assessment for teacher trainees.
According to Nana Kwame, the current focus on theoretical aspects of teaching, where trainees are required to sit for exams, should be reconsidered. Instead, he suggested that teacher trainees should be engaged in practical courses that enhance their skills, moving away from extensive theoretical examinations in exam halls.
“What we have been advocating for is a change in the mode of assessment. We are looking at the relationship between the exams we write at the College of Education and that of the licensure.”
“So, can there be a different way where we can focus on the practical aspect of teaching rather than sitting in the exam hall to write exams to be assessed?”
Meanwhile, former President John Mahama has pledged to cancel the licensure exams, contending that subjecting teacher trainees to an additional assessment for qualification is unnecessary.
He made this known during his ‘Building Ghana Tour’ in the Bono Region in November, but the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) has opposed the proposal.
“In my opinion, it is something that is good and it shouldn’t be cancelled. That is CETAG we have stated that we should implement what we agreed two years ago when we had a conference that the students wanting to enter the teaching profession should be subjected to entrance exams,” Prince Obeng Himah, the President of CETAG told the media.
A total of 6,451 (83.5%) teachers failed the 2023 Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination conducted in May 2023.
The results were released by the National Teaching Council (NTC) after the teachers wrote the re-sit papers. The number was out of the 7,728 teachers who participated in the re-sit exams, thus, only 1,277 passed.
The Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the National Teaching Council (NTC), Dennis Osei-Owusu, has said that the high failure rate in the 2023 Teacher Licensure Examination is a “national security threat.”
On the other hand, the Teacher Trainees Association of Ghana (TTAG), is calling for an increment in the teacher trainee allowance.