The Registrar for the National Teaching Council (NTC), Dr. Christian Addai-Poku has indicated that the council is trying to revise entry requirements for the various colleges of education across the country.

According to him, NTC has approached the Ministry of Education and Parliament to begin discussions into the matter.

He explained that some actions needed to be taken to tackle the issue of students transitioning from Senior High Schools into the tertiary institutions without genuine grades.

The registrar said some private senior high schools use foul means to pass their students into higher educational institutions.

This, he said also accounted for the poor performances in the recent teacher licensure exams.

According to Dr. Addai-Poku, stringent measures must be adopted to prevent such students from transitioning into higher educational institutions.

“We’ve been working behind the scene trying to find a way of dealing with this. That is why we are bringing a reform in the licensure examination. We have even approached the Ministry of Education, we have approached parliament trying to see how we can restructure the entry requirement to the colleges and so on.

“We have a challenge. I must also concede that even they go beyond the training institutions. Sometimes you have to also look at the foundational level; right from the basic school to the senior high to the university, because if the person is really good at the senior high and really deserves the WASSCE result that the person used to enter college, then the person shouldn’t have had difficulty in going through the licensure exam,” he said on JoyNews’ Newsfile on Saturday.

The education sector has been hit by news of massive failure of students who sat to write the recent Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination conducted in May 2023. Out of a total of 7,728 student teachers who sat for the exam, a staggering figure of 6,451, constituting 83.5% failed.

Some students have expressed concerns that the areas of questions did not match their specific fields of study.

However, some authorities have welcomed the failure, with some referring to it as a “good omen.”

The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, Kofi Asare, says the failure is a positive development since it sieves unfit teachers from the system.

“It is never a failure, it is a good omen for basic education because if you look at the whole issue, licensing teachers was to ensure that professional teaching standards are enhanced and so if you want to professionalise teaching, you need to raise the bar,” he said.

Meanwhile, authorities have noted that there will be some changes in the mode of the teacher licensure examination. The subsequent examinations will seek to assess students more on their areas of expertise.