Government has said that prospective students seeking admission to Colleges of Education from 2023 will write entrance Exams.
This New directive was a result of poorly written answers that caught a glimpse in a lot of teachers’ examination scripts for obtaining a teacher’s license, thus these shot a serious concern amongst stakeholders in the educational sector to conduct the entrance for new applicants from 2023.
In an interview with stakeholders at a conference on teacher training, the Chief Director at the Ministry of Education, Divine Ayidzoe indicated that the exam will be written based on two major core subjects: Mathematics and English.
“If we are talking about teacher quality, I think it is time. Even the licensure exam data shows that trained teachers who have written BECE, WASSCE, and undergone scrutiny at UCC and UEW cannot write a single sentence. How are they going to teach? So there is a call that from next year, entrance exams in Mathematics and English should be conducted so that, we get the best to enter our Colleges of Education”, he reiterated
The teacher licensure examination was introduced in 2018 to asses and give teachers the requisite certification to practice in Ghana, but became an issue of serious controversy in the country.
Majority of Ghanaians have suggested that instead of the conduct of the examination, the curriculum should be given a second look to make licensure a part of the course program.
The government had bent on that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the process, but the opposition National Democratic Congress NDC responded that the mode of the delivery of the exams was utterly no the way to go.
Currently, the Education Minister, Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, said his stables is coming in with new plans and strategies targeted at dwindling the rate at which teachers fail the licensure exams.
This was in banter to the fact that the majority of teachers who sat for the exams in March 2021 failed woefully at least two courses in the exams.
The National Union of Ghana Students and Teacher Trainees has expressed striking concerns about the failure they recorded in the exam.
Dr. Yaw Adutwum has assured that the Ministry will collaborate with stakeholders to find a pragmatic solution to the problem.
By Lawrence Odoom