In line with efforts to improve education, the government has instituted an incentive scheme for teachers and non-teaching staff – the “Teacher Professional Allowance”. This will allow for their continuous professional development.
Under the allowance scheme, every teacher is expected to receive GHC1,200 while non-teaching staff will earn GHC600 to assist their career development.
Speaking at a press briefing in Accra on Tuesday on government measures to ease restrictions on education, Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, Minister of Education, said the government had approved a critical support allowance for Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union members who have been excluded from allowance schemes for the past eight years.
The incentive is paid to staff with the service to enable them to perform better.
In his tenth address to the nation on the coronavirus, delivered on Sunday 31 May, President Akufo-Addo announced that from Monday 15 June onwards, schools and universities will start to reopen to final-year students. The revised measures are in keeping with the broad plan for fighting the spread of the coronavirus disease in Ghana.
The president announced that final-year junior high school classes will include a maximum of 30 students per class and senior high school classes a maximum of 25 students. University lectures will take place with half the usual class size.
Salary arrears cleared
Dr Opoku Prempeh said since 2017 the government has recruited 93,724 teaching and non-teaching staff in total for employment into the Ghana Education Service (GES).
He stressed that all teachers recruited in 2018 have been put on the payroll. All of those who have served more than three months have been paid their salary arrears.
This year, the Ghana Education Service and the teachers’ unions have agreed and introduced an exam, the minister said, to eliminate the common practice of promoting individuals but then not placing them at a level that corresponds with their promotion for years on end.
“Under our government, all teachers who have been promoted were put on the new scale and have been paid their allowances,” Dr Opoku Prempeh said.
