Teacher Licensure Examination Is Not Useful – Minority Tells Government

The Minority in Parliament is calling on the Ministry of Education to suspend the Teacher Licensure Examination, saying it is not useful.

According to Deputy Ranking Member on the Education Committee, Dr. Clement Apaak, the mode of the licensing was also delaying the postings of teacher trainees to schools in dire need of teachers. He said economically, it does not make sense to train teachers, spend money on them but then have them stay at home because they did not pass the licensure exams.

Dr. Apaak who is a member of Parliament for Builsa South constituency, was speaking in an interview on Accra based Joy News on Thursday, August 26.

Dr. Apaak suggested that the assessment of the teacher trainees can be done within the context of the structure available at the teacher training colleges.

“The Teacher Licensure Exams, as it is currently structured is not useful. We say so because students train for three good years in teacher training colleges, pass every single exam, but then they have to pass a six-hour aptitude test, before they are deemed qualified of teaching when we are in dire need of thousands of teachers.

“Our position in the Minority is not that exams should not be written or that teachers should not be licensed, we are saying that that can be done within the context of the structures already available at the teacher training colleges", he stressed.

In view of the about 8,000 teachers who failed this years exams, he said that suggested that there were challenges in the teacher training colleges, and therefore, called on those responsible to fix that.

“If the government is using the aptitude test to suggest that many of the teacher training colleges are not fit for purpose, is it not an indictment of the government itself and the Ministry of Education,” he questioned.

Dr. Apaak was however, quick to add that the minority did not oppose the teacher licensure exams but rather the mode in which it was carried out.

“We are not opposed to licensing teachers, it is the mode and the method by which it is being done that we are opposed to and we believe this is not fair to the students and their parents.,” he said.

The National Teaching Council (NTC) , an agency under the Ministry of Education in 2018 introduced the Teacher Licensure Examination aimed at licensing teachers who teach or want to teach in public pre-tertiary schools in the country.  This according to the Ministry of Education, is in fulfillment of Section 12(4) of the Education Act, 2008 (Act 778) which states that “The programme of study for pre-tertiary teachers that lead to a license to teach shall be developed in consultation with the Council.”