The Chairman of the Accra Metro West District, Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), William Yitah says there is so much work and stress in the Ghana Education Service (GES) which is having a severe impact on the health of teachers.

He said this while discussing the new academic calendar that has been proposed by GES. He said the new calendar will just add more stress to teachers due to how compact it looks.

“Within my metro, people are even asking me what I’m going to do about the rampant deaths of teachers, in a week I can bury between two or three teachers,….the stress in GES is serious, its having a great impact on the teachers”,  he lamented.

Speaking on Prime Morning, Mr. Yitah said that having just nine days for vacation as proposed in the new calendar will be very stressful especially for teachers handling large classes.

He added that if GES is trying to go back to the old system when the academic calendar began in September, they can still achieve that by gradually spreading the academic terms across a period of two years instead of trying to compress everything in a year.

“We might not necessarily have to cut some of the terms off but we can drift gradually towards the old system…we can just be increasing the contact hours per term and reducing the holidays gradually, if we were doing 25 days holidays, now we can do 20” he said.

The Chairman also indicated that the Union has plans of writing a petition to GES and in the meantime keeping their fingers crossed that their cries will be heard.

On Wednesday, February 8, 2023, the Ghana Education Service released a new academic calendar for Senior High Schools and basic schools and directed all regional directors in the country to ensure that heads of schools for Basic and Second Cycle Schools in their respective regions comply accordingly.