The deputy Minister of
Education in charge of Tertiary Education, Mr Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa has admonished
teachers, who engage in side businesses during school hours to desist from such
practices.
He expressed worry over how
a good number of teachers in schools were engaging in the sales of rechargeable
cards, selling of pastries in schools, driving taxis among others, to the
detriment of their pupils.
A situation he likened to the
proverbial biblical case of serving two masters and cautioned that, “as Christ
told us long ago, you can’t serve two masters... You either sell credit cards
or be a teacher, you can’t do the two”.
The deputy minister, who was
commissioning an ultra-modern office complex for the Ketu North district Education
directorate at Dzodze in the Volta region on Friday, said such bad practices
coupled with other “serious management issues” were the cause of the fallen standard
of education in the region and Ghana as a whole.
According to him, findings
and analysis by the Ministry revealed that the inability of directors and
managers to supervise and carry out managerial issues has brought about such
bad practices including drunkenness and absenteeism.
He disclosed that “teacher
absenteeism in the Volta region is the highest, over 45percent as compared to
the national average of 27percent”.
He wondered why private
basic schools which are bereft of qualified and underpaid teachers are rather
doing better than public basic schools which has more qualified and better paid
teachers, adding ‘the current situation is unacceptable because the performance
of public second cycle and tertiary institutions are much better than the
private ones, hence the need for the same results at the basic level.’
Mr. Ablakwa therefore
charged education managers not to be “arm chair directors, relying on only
paper reports and hearsay accounts” but also go to the field to ensure strict
supervision and proper management of schools.
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