The minority in Parliament is demanding for the immediate suspension of the teacher licensure exams, describing it as a “bottleneck for trainees”.
The National Teaching Council (NTC), an agency under the Ministry of Education in 2018 introduced the Teacher Licensure Examinations aimed at licensing teachers who teach or want to teach in public pre-tertiary schools in the country.
The minority argues the duration and mode of training students go through at the Colleges of Education cannot be underestimated as far as their professional competence is concerned.
A statement issued by the minority spokesperson on the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education Peter Nortsu-Kotoe said: “…After the teacher-trainees have gone through a three-year programme, now four years and having to obtain a number of credits to qualify as teachers, a six-hour aptitude test or examination is conducted to determine their professional competence.
“The question one asks is that can a six-hour examination correct or rectify any inadequacies or inefficiencies in the teacher that a three-year programme of study could not correct?”
“As minority, we wish to assure all teacher-trainees that we are with them in their struggle and wish to re-assure them that an NDC government on coming into office on 7 January 2025 will consider the one-year off campus teaching as a national service period as well as making the Licensure Examination part of the credit hours they have to obtain as they go through the course of study to graduate as teachers,” the statement added.
Over 8,000 fail teacher licensure examinations
The NTC on (4 January) announced 8,000 teacher trainees failed their teacher licensure examinations.
The figure represents 30.7% out of a total of 27, 455 candidates who sat for the examinations.
In all 19,013 candidates, representing 69.3% passed the exams, a statement from NTC revealed ahead of the release of the results of the October 2020 Ghana Teacher Licensure exams on Tuesday (5 January 2021).
The council further called on all candidates to check their results from the NTC online portal at exam.ntc.gov.gh by using either their pins given during registration or their examination index numbers using their phone numbers.
Fred Dzakpata
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