The President of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) says despite the concerns raised about the mass exodus of teachers from Ghana to the UK, many more are ready to leave should the opportunity present itself.

Rev Isaac Owusu says this is because the conditions of service in the country are not favourable to teachers unlike the condition of service in foreign countries.

“Apart from what the registrar quoted that 10,000 are successful to go to the UK, there are others who are already in Canada. There are others who are already in South Africa. There are others who are already in China. Day in and day out any teacher in Ghana who gets the opportunity is ready to leave,” he explained.

He told host of Newsfile, Samson Lardy Anyenini that, “It isn't that the teacher don’t get the requirement to stay in Ghana. But the condition in which the teacher is working, is what is motivating those who are running out of the country”.

Rev Isaac noted that as a result there is a teacher shortage in the country stating that many schools in rural and remote areas lack tutors.

He stated that although there are teachers in cities there are many who have completed teacher training schools and universities but remain unemployed.

He disputed the Education Minister’s claim that teacher distribution is the problem stating “Nobody can tell us in Ghana that we do not have teacher shortage. You go to the district directorates, the directors are always compiling vacancies to the regions, and the regions are also forwarding these vacancies to the headquarters.”

“What we know as a union is that there are a lot of classrooms that are begging for teachers and the conditions that the current teachers are in are not the best. If indeed we have a lot of teachers in Ghana, then the government should open up and put these teachers there and fill the vacancies.”

This comes after the Registrar of the National Teaching Council, Dr. Christian Addai-Poku raised concern about the high attrition rate in the nation’s education sector, and the threat it poses towards the future of the nation’s educational system and development.

According to him, early this year a little over 16,000 Ghanaian teachers applied to the Department of Education in the UK for employment and by June 13th 2023, 10,000 of the applicants with Ghana Teacher Licenses had been certified to work in the UK without any further assessment (qualified teacher status test) by the UK government.

He appealed to the government and all other stakeholders to put in place the right measures to curb the situation to avoid looming danger.

Also, speaking on Newsfile, the registrar clarified that the danger was not the shortage of teachers in Ghana but rather the loss of experienced teachers.

He explained that, “On average, we’re churning out about 30,000 teachers who pass licensure examinations every year. But it is not everybody that is absorbed by the Ghana Education Service, and so we still have a lot there who will be able to replace those who may leave.

“But the challenge is if they are leaving, sometimes you get experienced teachers leaving and you need to bring people to train them to the level that these people might have been. But all in all, there’s no teacher shortage in Ghana as at now…the looming danger is the experienced teachers who are leaving and that is our worry, that experienced teachers are leaving.”