Four teacher unions have urged the Ghana Education Service (GES) to withhold the implementation of the entire semester system at the pre-tertiary level until more talks with stakeholders are held.
According to the unions, the GES’ unilateral shift in the school calendar from the trimester system to the semester system to encompass students at the primary and kindergarten levels was arbitrary and an imposition on the key players in education, including the teacher unions.
Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Coalition of Concerned Teachers-Ghana (CCT-Gh), and Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) are the Teacher unions.
Consultations
“We, therefore, call on the GES to immediately withdraw the policy, pending full consultations with the unions in education and other major stakeholders, and do serve notice that failure to do so will be resisted fiercely,” the unions said in a joint statement issued yesterday.
It was signed by GNAT General Secretary Mr Thomas Musah, NAGRAT President Mr Angel Carbonu, CCT-Gh President Mr King Awudu Ali, and TEWU General Secretary Mr Mark Dankyira Korankye.
According to the unions, they were never consulted on such a critical policy issue.
In their statement, they explained that the number of hours required to work per day and week in the educational sector had been a source of concern for them, particularly when instructional and working hours had been increased unilaterally without consultation or negotiation, particularly with education unions.
“Per our collective agreement with regard to our working conditions, major policies such as this should come for discussion and negotiation.
“As educators, and speaking from a professional point of view, thorough discussions will bring to the fore the effects of a long school calendar on both teaching and learning and also on the health of both workers and learners,” the statement said
Need for discussions
To provide additional insight on the situation, Mr Musah told the Daily Graphic that the unions were opposed not just to the expansion of contact hours, but also to the semester system, since the two were interwoven.
“It is both contact hours, which were an issue, and the removal of the trimester system. We are saying that you cannot have KG pupils do semester,” he said.
The GNAT General Secretary said that the policy needs to be considered so that if teachers were to be compensated, it would be done properly with their involvement.
Furthermore, he expressed worry about the GES’s intention to prolong contact hours for instructors.
Disregard
According to Mr Musah, the decision was made in blatant violation of the GES’s collective agreement for teaching staff, the code of conduct for instructors, and a direction from the National Labour Commission (NLC).
He chastised the GES for making “a unilateral decision” and threatened to report the service’s behavior to the NLC.
He said that if the NLC did not act, no one should blame teachers for the actions they would take.
Mr Musah said that a working group had been formed to discuss contact hours with the parties (the GES and the unions) in accordance with the NLC’s direction.
He regretted that, despite the fact that the committee had not completed its work and had not reported back to the commission, the GES had issued additional contact hours to begin this academic year.
He added that the new contact hours were from 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., rather than the previous six hours (8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.), with the other possibilities being from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
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SOURCE: GRAPHIC ONLINE
