Former rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Professor Stephen Adei, has said that most teachers in public basic schools are “criminals”.
According to him, most of these teachers do not adequately teach their pupils, yet go on to take their full monthly salaries.
Prof Adei was responding to critics who argue that the government’s double-track system will affect the quality of education at the high school level.
Speaking on Accra-based Class FM, he said the quality of education has nothing to do with the double track system but rather the attitude of teachers.
“Quality issues have nothing to do with the double-track system. The quality issue, first and foremost, lies in our basic education,” he stated.
Prof Adei said most teachers in public basic schools are criminals who don’t teach and prefer to send their wards to private schools.
“80% of Ghanaian children attend public basic schools, and if you go there, many of the teachers are pure criminals. They don’t teach, and the worst still is that: people who have been trained as teachers, and they are paid more than GHS1,000 a month to teach in the public schools, send their children to private basic schools where the teachers are secondary school failures.
“In other words, they are saying that we will not teach and we’ll take our children to be taught by untrained secondary school failures. Why? Because, there, their children will pass and go to secondary school,” he added.
Prof. Adei noted that there must be effective supervision in the various public schools to ensure that the teachers do their jobs. He said authorities must ensure that “the public schools teach, and it always lies with supervision.
At this moment, even teacher training is not the most important thing but the supervision and making them accountable and that if they don’t teach, they’re fired, without adding a pesewa, you can improve the quality of basic education, at least, four times and once you produce better basic education graduates, immediately, you’ve improved secondary school.”
He added that Ghana has the “worst basic education system in terms of quality and output in the whole world. Go to Togo, every child who has been in school for two years can read.
Go to any Ghanaian [public basic] school and see if there is a Class Two pupil who can read and you’ll not get more than one out of 10, and yet, I, Stephen Adei, can teach a child to read within three months so long as he is five years old…”
