Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) operating within the education sector have called for an urgent address to a seeming conflict between the Ministry of Education (GES) and the Ghana Education Services (GES) in recent times as it is hurting pre-tertiary education.
According to the CSOs, available information gathered from recent happenings between the two critical organisations running the affairs of the education sector shows that the ministry has in recent times been trying to sideline and undermine the operations of the GES.
The most recent one is the Director-General of GES indicating he is unaware of a digital literary training initiative that the MoE is claiming has benefitted over 40,000 teachers across the country. Meanwhile, the GES was supposed to have been the implementing body of such initiatives in the pre-tertiary education space.
The Executive Director, Institute for Education Studies (IFEST), Peter Anti, stated that his outfit has taken notice of a series of events that might have a drastic effect on the education system, highlighting that it is called a system because it has various parts which have to function properly to achieve the common goal; hence when one part is not effective, it affects the whole system.
For instance, National Teaching Council (NTC) has the mandate to promote teacher professionalism; National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA) is responsible for Curriculum and Assessment issues at the pre-tertiary level; National Schools Inspectorate Authority (NaSIA) is mandated to provide an independent external evaluation of the quality and standards in basic and second cycle educational institutions in the country periodically.
Whereas the MoE has oversight responsibility for all its agencies, the GES – which is the largest agency under the education ministry – is responsible for the implementation of approved national pre-tertiary educational policies and programmes.
The mandate of the GES makes it practically impossible for any decision or policy to take place at the pre-tertiary level without their input because they are the implementers of all these policies as mandated by law, making it very worrying if the director-general is unaware of such a huge initiative.
The IFEST outlined about four incidences in the education sector that suggest an attempt to weaken the GES and render it redundant in undertaking its mandate in the sector in a very worrying trend.
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These worrying developments include the National Standard Test (NST) mode of implementation confusion; the Erratic School Calendar in recent times due to the ministry setting up a committee to produce same instead of GES; the recruitment of headteachers for newly completed STEM schools; and the GALOP teacher training issues points out that the MoE is gradually juggling the role of policy formulation and implementing agency and this presents the GES as inefficient.
“It is clear from the correspondence from the World Bank, the GES, and the press statements from the Ministry that the GES which is mandated to undertake this teacher training exercise was sidelined in the entire process. Without impugning any motives, IFEST cannot fathom how such a project could be purported to have been carried out without the explicit knowledge and involvement of the GES.
The Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch) has also raised serious credibility concerns about the data provided by the MoE concerning the training of some 40,000 teachers in digital literacy.
“The lack of awareness by the GES Director-General on a report submitted by MoE on the conduct of digital literacy training for as many as 40,000 of its employees also raises serious concerns about data credibility, an issue that must be addressed by the World Bank, since both the MoE and GES have conflicting positions on the matter.
“For the avoidance of doubt, two key beneficiaries of GALOP are teachers and learners, all directly under the GES, making their full participation and cooperation non-negotiable,” Eduwatch Executive Director, Kofi Asare, stated.
Kofi Asare expressed that while the education sector stakeholder community is fully aware of this conflict, continued silence is affecting education policy implementation and coordination. It is therefore calling on the president of the republic to intervene immediately.
“In the immediate term, the Presidency must intervene to resolve the perceived factionalism at the MoE and GES, as it has a strong potential to negatively affect the implementation of education policies and programmes of government,” he stressed.
