Automatic employment of products of colleges of education — Arrangements not cancelled

All products of the country’s colleges of education, upon successful graduation, will continue to be guaranteed automatic employment under the Ghana Education Service (GES), the Ministry of Education has assured.

“First of all, I need to emphasise that nobody has ever said the regime which allows for our products from the colleges of education to be absorbed automatically upon graduation into the teaching field has been cancelled. That regime is still on,” the Deputy Minister of Education in charge of Tertiary, Mr Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, has said.

Speaking to journalists at the ministries, he said: “I do not know where the suspicion is coming from that perhaps that arrangement has been reviewed or cancelled. 

“I do not know if it is determined from the fact that there is a new Colleges of Education Act and they have been elevated to full tertiary institutions. Perhaps they think that because a similar arrangement does not exist for the polytechnics and universities it may affect them. That is very far-fetched,” he said.

The assurance followed a petition to the Ministry of Education by trainees of the colleges of education to make its position clear on their fate after completion because they had information that their automatic employment after school was no longer guaranteed.

Feeding grant

The petition by the trainees, according to Mr Ablakwa, also touched on their feeding, so he explained that the government continued to feed students of colleges of education thrice daily and that had not been reviewed.

“The feeding has not been reviewed. We continue to feed them thrice a day,” he said, noting that some of the students were billed by their principals and were not too sure that they would be reimbursed.

“If they had communicated with their principals they would have been told that they would be reimbursed and indeed, the last academic year, they were reimbursed. They can check with their predecessors. They were reimbursed,” he told journalists.

He explained that the principals said they would like to always buy their items in bulk and since government’s releases were not immediate, “they prefer that they will ask the students to pay upfront as part of their school fees when they are paying their fees but they will be reimbursed when government releases come in.”

Giving a background, Mr Ablakwa explained that at the beginning of every year, government negotiated with the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education, what the feeding fee per student should be.

He, therefore, said there was no substance in the suspicion that the feeding grants would be withdrawn, “We will continue to feed the students of colleges of education thrice a day. They are the only tertiary institutions that enjoy this facility.” 

Background to students’ allowance

Touching on the withdrawal of the allowances for students in the colleges of education, Mr Ablakwa explained that it was introduced by the first President of Ghana, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, to attract more people into the teaching profession, but was cancelled in 1971 by the Busia regime.

He said the cancellation reduced the number of colleges from 85 to 38, converting those cancelled to secondary schools as part of the policy of the then government that they needed more secondary schools.

Mr Ablakwa explained that in 1979, however, former President J.J. Rawlings reintroduced the allowance  to attract more people into the profession with the exodus of Ghanaian teachers to Nigeria.

Quota system

“However, over time, the allowances regime brought in the quota system. At the beginning of every academic year, the colleges of education will check from the government, based on its budget, how many trainees government can support with the allowances.”

“So, by the time we intervened in 2013/14 academic year, the 38 public colleges of education were operating 40 per cent of their capacity,” he explained.

 Mr Ablakwa recalled that the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education over the years pleaded with successive governments to be permitted to fill the remaining 60 per cent with fee-paying students but the successive governments declined the request, arguing that it would amount to pricing education beyond the ordinary Ghanaian.

Students’ loan

He explained that with the upgrading of the colleges of education to tertiary institutions and the withdrawal of the allowance, the colleges of education were now operating at full capacity while the trainees were now accessing the students’ loan.

The deputy minister said currently over 4,100 trainees from colleges of education had accessed the students’ loan.

Writer’s Email: severious.dery@graphic.com.gh