Teacher unions, stakeholders want GTLE maintained – Gov’t official

Relevant stakeholders in the education sector including pre-tertiary teacher unions want the Ghana teacher licensure examination (GTLE) to be maintained, former Director-General of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), Prince Hamid Armah has said.

The unions he said include the Teacher Training Association of Ghana (TTAG), the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the Coalition of Concerned Teachers (CCT), the Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU), and the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS).

Speaking on the Asaase Breakfast show monitored by Pretertiary.com, the Chair of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) manifesto education subcommittee said his party is committed to retaining the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE).

“We asked them a specific question: ‘Do you want the Ghana teacher licensure examination scrapped? And all of them said no; we want the teacher licensure exams maintained,” Prince Hamid Armah told the host of the Asaase Breakfast show.

He added, “What we want you to look at is the timing of writing the licensure exams—very straightforward and now we have all of them on record—very forthright on what they want and exactly what they want is what we have provided.”

The former NaCCA Director’s comment comes after former President and flagbearer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), John Dramani Mahama, said his next government will scrap the teacher licensure exams and integrate same into the final year exams of teacher trainees.

“We’ll abolish teacher licensure exams and integrate it into the licensing process into their final year exams. We’ll institute the teacher ‘dabre’ project and what this means is that any new school we are building must be accompanied by accommodation for teachers

We are not going to build classroom blocks any more without teacher accommodation. Every new classroom block must have teacher accommodation, and we’ll also accelerate providing accommodation by the existing schools that do not have them, and that will be the teacher ‘dabre’, which means where a teacher will sleep programme,” he stated.

Meanwhile, the purpose of the GTLE is to enable qualified teachers to acquire a professional licence and to ascertain whether candidates meet the demands of the National Teachers’ Standards on professional knowledge, practice, values, and attitudes necessary to deliver effectively in schools.

In other news, former Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has appealed to the central government to reconsider its decision to abolish the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE) by the end of August this academic year.

In an interview monitored by Pretertiary.com, the immediate past Education Minister said the move to end the conduct of the licensure examination could undermine efforts to uphold professional standards within the teaching profession.

According to him, the teacher licensure examination programme was initially piloted by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) before being transitioned into a full-scale scheme under the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

“NDC piloted the Teacher Licensure Exams before we took over and made it a transitional scale programme. They are in power now. They have the authority. They want to change it; it is between them and the good people of Ghana,” Dr Adutwum stated.

He added, “I, as a teacher, believe that, like accountants and lawyers, teachers must also have a license so that our respect will go through the roof. I am not promoting that teachers should leave the country, but with the license, a teacher goes to the UK, they can step into the classroom and teach.”