Dr Adutwum said that the record is “good news because we are getting the best. If we were passing everybody then nobody would fail.”
“You have to have them (the requirements/license) to meet the standard, to enter the classroom and do a great job for our children. If we’re realising that, unfortunately, they are not meeting the standard why pass them all?” the Minister quizzed.
The statement from the Minister of Education, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, comes in the wake of the National Teaching Council (NTC) revealing on December 20 that about 9,556 teachers, constituting 47%, failed the 2023 licensure exam. Out of the 20,181 teachers who participated, only 10,625 successfully passed.
The performance in elective subjects was notably weaker, with 53 out of 63 subjects recording a 50% or higher pass rate, while 10 subjects recorded less than a 50% pass rate. It’s worth noting that this is not the first time mass failure has been recorded in the history of the licensure exams.
Dr. Adutwum emphasized ongoing collaborative efforts between his ministry and the NTC to address and mitigate the annual incidence of failures in the licensure exams.
He admitted that “the exam is very different from the courses they are used to. The exams are assessing more critical thinking. Maybe the grades from their teachers and the courses that they did are not aligned, so we need to do a better job getting them prepared.”
Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum expressed confidence that with sufficient preparation, a significant majority of teacher trainees could enhance their performance in the Teacher Licensure Examination.
“We have all discussed what they (NTC) should do is to get study materials because this is a new exam…now we are doing restructuring with NTC to ensure that as soon as they finish school they can write the exams there, so they do not stay at home and be still for one year waiting to write the exams.”
Dr Adutwum stated that it is important to ensure that better-trained teachers are passing the exam and being employed rather than completely scrapping it.
“We know no one likes exams and therefore if you take the easy road as a politician and say ‘I am scrapping it’, they will jubilate but are the students in the classroom going to jubilate?”