Over 400 candidates yet to pass Teacher Licensure Exams after over 4 times trials

EducationGhana| February 04| Teacher Licensure Exams: The National Teaching Council (NTC) has said that records show that 84 candidates have written GTLE 5 times, and 372 candidates have written it 4 times but are yet to pass.

The NTC at its February 2022 stakeholders meeting said these failures on the part of the candidates necessitated the need for new reforms in the mode of conduct and type of content to be included as part of the exams.

Number of Exams

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 per cent 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 remain unanswered.” The NTC Registrar Dr Addai Poku said.

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.

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

“…one observation is that teachers have gone to train in a 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 a 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.