There are 998 excess teachers in senior high and basic schools in the Kumasi metropolis, a rationalisation exercise by the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) has revealed.
Out of the number, 644 are in basic schools, while the remaining 354 are in senior high schools (SHSs).
The exercise also showed that there were 105 vacancies in other schools, in the city which needed to be filled.
To address the situation, the Kumasi Municipal Directorate of the GES has decided that no teacher from a college of education, a university or any metropolitan, municipal or district would be accepted in the Kumasi metropolis in the next five years.
The Kumasi Metropolitan Director of Education, Mrs E. Naana Abudu, who made this known to the Daily Graphic in an interview, said no teacher had so far been transferred.
She said the metropolitan directorate was currently compiling a list of people who had applied for transfer on their own, those going on retirement, those dead, as well as people who had vacated their posts.
The completion of the exercise, Mrs Abudu said, would aid the education directorate to determine the way forward.
The metro director advised teachers in the metropolis not to panic when the rationalisation exercise began because no one would be transferred from Kumasi.
Rather, vacancies that had been created as a result of people going on retirement or vacating their posts would be filled with the excess teachers, she said.
Background
Last February, the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, attributed the problem militating against quality education provision in the country to the lack of teachers, a problem occasioned partly by their inequitable distribution.
She said research by the ministry had indicated that there were more teachers than required in the urban and peri-urban centres, while less-privileged districts and rural schools had inadequate teacher supply.
To address the problem, the Ministry of Education and the GES have embarked on a rationalisation exercise with the objective of ensuring an equitable distribution of teachers to pre-tertiary public schools.
Under the exercise, about 80,000 teachers nationwide are expected to be transferred from their present schools to other locations, depending on where their services will be needed.
In the Ashanti Region alone, 8,000 teachers will be transferred to the rural areas.
Source: Felix Baidoo/D-G
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