The National Teaching Council says the teacher licensure examination will soon blend an assessment of both the professional and competency of teachers.

Under the proposed plan, numeracy and literacy will be taken off the exams and candidates will be examined both in professionalism and competence in their major subject areas.

Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE) and Ghana Basic Education and Skills Test (GBEST) since 2018, has conducted seven successive examinations.

For the past three years, 128,493 candidates have sat for GTLE and out of this 88,061 which constitutes 69 percent have passed.

Records show that 84 candidates have written GTLE 5 times, and 372 candidates have written it 4 times but are yet to pass.

The mode of training of these candidates cuts across regular, sandwich, online and distance programmes.

How these candidates were able to pass through teacher education programmes successfully and yet are unable to pass basic skills in numeracy, literacy and essential professional skills remains unanswered.

This worrying situation has featured persistently in every GTLE Awards Committee meeting. Some of the reasons adduced for this worrying occurrence are;

• Poor entry qualification
• Poor alignment between teacher education courses and the GTLE
• Inadequate preparation of students in line with the national teachers’ standards and the national teacher education curriculum framework

These have necessitated the need for some reforms in the GTLE.

Registrar for the National Training Council, Dr. Christian Addai-Poku, says these three new reforms will address mis-assignment of teachers.

“…one observation is that teachers have gone to train in certain aspect of knowledge but when they come to the classroom, they are assigned something different they trained in.

For example, someone is trained in Integrated Science but he comes to a school and there is no Maths teacher so he is assigned to teach it.”

He says the reform is supposed to streamline this.

“So if you have done Twi and you think you can teach English, we won't stop you but before you can do that you have to go and write the licensure in that specialized area, if you are able to pass then we issue you a license that even though you trained in this subject, you are capable and competent enough to teach this other subject. So, we give you license in addition,” he added.

Chairman of the Council, Anis Haffar, says improving the training of teachers with focus on ICT proficiency is critical in today's education.

The meeting attracted vice chancellors, representatives from teacher training institutions and the Ministry of Education.

Education Minister, Dr. Osei Adutwum who joined through zoom was impressed with the move by NTC.

Other Reforms
The Minister of Education and NTC which is the agency responsible for teacher education want the introduction of selection test at the point of admission to help admit applicants who are really fit to be trained as teachers.

To stave off failures in literacy and numeracy test after graduation, applicants should pass these tests before admission and as a giveaway, NTC will take out the numeracy and literacy from GTLE.

This includes the Subject-Based Test and Computer-Based Test (CBT). The CBT is to help stimulate candidates’ interactions with the computer, apart from helping reduce cheating to the barest minimum.

Besides the selection test, NTC intends to introduce proficiency test in the form of subject and level-based test. This test will help obviate some alignment issues between the GTLE and the teacher education curricula

Teacher Education Curricula
In accordance with Education Regulatory Bodies ACT 1023 of 2020, NTC, as part of its functions, is to develop teacher education curricula.

The Council is currently working with T-TEL to develop teacher education curriculum guide which may lead to a revision of the NTECF to adequately accommodate senior high school, TVET and STEM teacher education.

Dr. Addai-Poku underscored that the Council is currently embarking on indexing of all teacher education students across the country.

“From this year, the Council intends to implement the indexing fee of 50 Ghana cedis per student as approved by Parliament under fees and charges. Very soon, candidates who are not indexed will not be permitted to write the GTLE”.

Meanwhile, there is also Teacher Education Accreditation Framework being developed to enable NTC carry out its accreditation functions.

Officials say it will ensure a two-stage accreditation of institutions and programmes.

The Council says it will be visiting various teacher education institutions to enforce its accreditation mandate.

“The Council is also informed of some unaccredited programmes being run by some institutions. Very soon NTC will be visiting various teacher education institutions to enforce its accreditation mandate. NTC is fully ready to work with all stakeholders, particularly, GTEC, PRINCOF, Vice Chancellors, and the unions to ensure that we deliver quality teachers for our schools”.