The Ghana National Association of Teachers has appealed to the government to appoint a substantive Minister of Education, Science and Sports to carry the new reforms in education through.

It said there was the need for a substantive Minister to pilot the process which demands such critical steps as orientation of teachers, distribution of syllabi, planning for admissions for the first batch of Senior High School students and text books development.

Deputy General Secretary General of GNAT, John Nyoagbe made the appeal at the closing ceremony of a weeklong in-service workshop for teachers. It was jointly organised by GNAT and the Canadian Teachers Federation.

Mr Nyoagbe said teachers would continue to live by their mandate of promoting high academic standards, professional competence and ensure exemplary conduct, saying “what ever we will do either as classroom teachers, educational leaders and administrators, our policies, programmes and activities should ultimately benefit the child, pupil or student”.

The Deputy General Secretary further urged government to address the perennial problem of making new teachers employed by the Ghana Education Service wait for 18 months or more to be put on pay roll and described as frustrating to many fresh teachers.

He appealed also to the Ghana Education Service, Ministry of Finance and the Controller and Accountant General’s Department to institute a scheme that will automatically put fresh teachers on their actual salaries within two months after their results had been declared by the professional boards, University of Cape Coast or other teacher training institutions.

My Nyoagbe also harped on the white paper of the government on the three tier pension scheme expressing concern about teachers on SSNIT pension scheme who had less than five years to retire and might not benefit from the proposed scheme.

GNAT, he said demands that government arranges to package for their category of disadvantaged public servants who stand not to gain from the three tier scheme”.

Source: The Ghanaian Times