The Minister of Education has directed the Governing Council of the National Teaching Council (NTC) to take immediate steps to phase out the teacher licensure examinations by August 30.
Haruna Iddrisu says this will ensure smooth transition for government to begin the process of scrapping the licensure exams.
The sector minister is confident that scraping the exams will also fulfil the manifesto pledge of the President to ensure that teachers after training will not write any exams.
“There is still the vex matter of teacher licensure exams the last of it must be concluded not later than 30th August,” he directed.
“If there is the last opportunity of those who sat and couldn’t make it, that process should not travel beyond 30th August,” Mr Iddrisu said.
According to him, “this new model, which will guide the teacher licensure exams will be rolled out when the final batch of teachers who failed are allowed to re sit.”
In a related development, the Minister has asked the NTC to ensure that teachers’ pension funds are used as collateral to build accommodation for them.
“If for instance, teachers will agree that at the end of each month you make a total contribution of 200 cedis, government can probably compliment it with another 200 then we can build two-three bedroom house and use the pension fund as guaranteed collateral,” he suggested.
In another development, the Minister has charged the new Governing Council of the Chartered Institute of Banking to deal with issues of fraud in the financial sector.
“Last year, there was alarming increase of 3,500 reported cases involving about a hundred and ten million Ghana cedis. This underscored the urgent need for sustained professional education, ethical and regulatory framework, ” he said.
“We are concerned about fraud in the banking sector and the use of ICT tools, and our worry sometimes is that some of these frauds cannot be possible without the facilitation of some of your few people in the sector,” Mr Iddrisu stressed.
