The Institute for Education Studies (IFEST) has stated that it will not be in the interest of the country to halt the teacher licensure exams.
The comment comes after the minority in Parliament called for the scrapping of the 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.
Speaking on The Big Bulletin with Beatrice Adu, the Executive Director for IFEST, Peter Anti, said the called by the minority is misplaced.
“We think that the basis on which they are calling for the scrapping of the licensure of exams is unfounded.
“If there are challenges with the examination, I think we have to sit down, identify these challenges and find ways and means to resolve it rather than to call for a total abolishing of the licensure exams based on the fact that some students sat for the exams and have failed,” Anti said.
He added: “I think that we should all be very concerned about the reason behind the high failure rate and find ways and means to resolve it, and not to just scrap it and let everybody go through the system as it has been for the past years.”
Scrap licensure exams
The minority in Parliament on Thursday (26 August ) called for the immediate suspension of the teacher licensure exams.
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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