A Professor of Educational Leadership at the Institute of Education Planning and Administration (IEPA), University of Cape Coast, George Oduro has recommended a decentralisation of the posting of professional teachers within the public sector.

According to him, other than initiating the posting of teachers at the ministry level, headteachers should be given the power to determine who should teach within the schools. Doing so, he said, would engender effective supervision and subsequently enhance the performance of teachers.

“Let us empower the Headteacher. The Headteacher should be resourced, the Headteacher should be given the free hand to determine who should teach in the school. Posting of teachers to the schools shouldn’t be centralised, done at the Ministry, done at the Ghana Education Service,” he explained.

Prof Oduro lamented that the posting of teachers executed at the Ministry level is usually done without a based-on-merit approach.

His comment is in agreement with a call from a former chairperson of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) under the Akufo-Addo government, Professor Stephen Adei to employ effective headteachers to assume the responsibility of selecting their own staff to ensure robust supervision. This, he said should be done in order to reduce “interference from above.”

Professor Adei has also suggested that all public school teachers be sacked in order to refresh Ghana’s education system.

However, Professor Oduro believes that issues bedeviling the education sector may not necessarily have to do with teachers themselves but might be a case of a lack of support for teachers and the huge deficits in infrastructure as well as lack of teaching and learning materials.

He added that unless support for teachers and schools improves, the sacking of all public school teachers would yield no positive results.

Meanwhile, the President of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Rev Isaac Owusu has criticized the comments made by Professor Adei with respect to sacking all public school teachers.

According to him, the government is hugely responsible for providing workers with the necessary tools and equipment in order to achieve quality delivery of service. He has lamented the unpaid arrears that have characterized the payment of salaries to teachers.

Mr. Owusu, therefore, argued that the call by Prof Adei to sack all public school teachers and introduce Headteachers to employ their own staff is unacceptable, saying that public school policies are unlike that of private schools.

He explained that it would be unfair to sack public school teachers without questioning those at the helm of affairs such as the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service, saying that they are solely responsible for the regulation of the education sector.

Some experts, in reaction to Professor Adei’s suggestion, have expressed that the country is not ready for such a directive in that it does not have the needed resources to support its implementation.

Others believe that problems plaguing the country’s education sector is not solely the responsibility of the government but rather the responsibility of all individuals.