Teaching is a profession, and has to abide by professional codes and standards. Licensure is a mark of every true profession. The professional teacher, apart from their academic certificate earned from their institution—whose courses might not be the same across other institutions, need in addition, a professional license—that is awarded based on meeting a defined criterion, mainly via the passing of a standardized examination within the profession.
The Education Act (778) of 2008 established the National Teaching Council (NTC) that has been mandated to oversee the practice of teaching in the country, and to issue licenses to professional teachers.
This legislative provision seeks to give legal grounding to the teaching profession, and also enhances its reputation. Almost every profession in the country has a body that regulates the activities of her members, and also issues out licenses to them. For example, the General Legal Council, the Medical and Dentistry Council, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, the Ghana Psychological Council, among others are regulatory bodies within their respective disciplines.
Thus, licencing of teachers will not be new, rather, it will add to existing best practices; and it will inure to the benefit of teachers and our schools. The policy when implemented will give legitimacy to teachers, enhance their competencies and capabilities, and make the profession a more disciplined one.
Successive governments and stakeholders within the education sector have always sought novel ways in improving the educational standards in the country. In doing so, recourse has always been to look at best practices that will help us cash in on identified and available opportunities.
It will be erroneous and misleading to assume that licensing of teachers is the panacea to improving our school system; however, it will be a panacea, and its implementation must be encouraged without situating the debate only within the myriad of issues that confront the education sector. We need to dispassionately analyse the policy, and see how we can make it better to benefit our school system.
It is a truism that no single policy intervention will be the solution to our educational misfortunes; there are other factors that need to be addressed. However, that does not mean that we should not have to introduce new policies that can improve our educational system.
We hope that instead of being quick to shoot down the policy because of the obvious known challenges that have bedevilled the sector over the years, we should rather look at its merits and demerits, and how we can leverage the merits to our benefit.
It is our expectation that before the policy is fully rolled out, most of the implementation issues such as the mode of examination, licencing fees would have been properly examined, spelt out, and well defined. We would also like to encourage the National Teaching Council to strengthen its consultations with the stakeholders, as well as the general public to reach the needed consensus for the acceptance and implementation of this worthwhile policy. The Ghana Education Service should also emphasize programs such as refresher courses, workshops, conferences all of which make teachers more capable, and improve educational standards.
Signed
Dr. Kingsley Nyarko
(Executive Director)
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Napo should be up and doing. Is this the priority of teachers. There are more important issues and lapses he needs to address but rather want to implement this unnecessary policy. NPP has forgotten these teachers voted massively for them. They are already peeved and need to be treated in a better way. NPP wise up before things go bad. Eyes are watching
this article is buuushit and doesn't give any meaningful idea to the debate
A teaching license is not necessary. What they need is Professional Development to equip them with new teaching skills and strategies. They need to conduct Action Research on their practice to generate new knowledge. Again, promotion of teachers through interview is completely wrong. Promotion should rather based on teacher's classroom practices and their involvement in community activities.
You see, sometimes it is necessary if you are rolling out a policy to clearly come out with the "Mischief" that this policy seeks to remedy, as in the Golden Rule in Interpretation of Statutes. The government should clearly spell out without any ambiguity what the teaching license seeks to achieve, remedy or cure. Is it bad performance of teachers, are the teachers so many that a way has to be find to control trained teachers, is the teacher training colleges performing so poorly that an independent institution is needed to re-examine graduates from these institutions, just to mention a few. This policy to me at best is ridiculous unless it is rather directed at trained teachers that temporary live the profession and wants to re-enter. Any graduates from our trained teacher colleges should graduate with such a license to teach. What "technical and practical in ***barred word*** component" of teaching that makes it paramount that you need to have a license before you teach?. Medical School, Law School and the rest only teaches the practical aspect of the course. Reading about how to do post mortem is different from actually carrying out the process. You must be assessed to see whether beyond the book brilliance, you have got the guts as well unlike teacher training. Please go back and come again with a better and streamlined policy.
Dont be stuuupppid, improve teaching conditions across the country and stop this cosmetic shiiiiiiiitttt. What will the license do? Is it not going to be issued by the same corrrrrupt people at GES. Why are Ghanaian govt policies based on OBVIOUS stuuuuupppppid assumptions?
Impressive. However, I hope it will come with better conditions of service for teachers.
Do you have a professional license to teach yourself? please stop this joke. Respect yourself as a lecturer of UG.