Ei-iE

Yevoo Pope Yao, local GNAT (Ghana National Association of Teachers) secretary of Dzodze, Ketu district, Volta region and regional EFAIDS trainer speaks about education and the EI EFAIDS Programme in Ghana.

What are the obstacles to achieving quality education in Ghana?

Regarding the major challenges of education in Ghana, I think the first thing is teacher deployment. There are inequalities in terms of distribution, there are places where we have more teachers – some schools are overstaffed, others are understaffed. Another challenge is the issue of access. People in the hard to reach areas do not have the same access as those in the urban areas, and even the smaller towns. People there do not have access to teachers; they don’t have access to educational materials, text-books, writing materials. For the teachers who have to go to the hard to reach areas, there are no facilities there to motivate them, and so when postings are decided newly trained teachers do not want to go to these areas. There are no incentives for them to go to the hard to reach areas.

Can the EFAIDS Programme help to overcome these issues?

I think so. Over the last months, in the various meetings we had we focus on these problems, and we are now going to put these issues into the public domain, and contribute to solving these problems. Our main focus is on training, advocacy and publicity, because we feel that after we have trained people that we need to advocate on the main issues arising from the workshops. That’s why we are increasing our advocacy work, and we are going to take it from the local to the national level. As a local secretary I can take the view of the people here to bear on national advocacy efforts. We work in partnership with the Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union (TEWU). We had a meeting on a workplace policy regarding HIV and AIDS for teachers, which we then drafted it together. We have also collaborated with TEWU in terms of training, we had a workshop in the greater Accra area and TEWU members were representatives.

What role do you see for the Ghana government in terms of education and conditions for teachers?

I think they have to tackle the issue of teacher deployment, that is the first thing, and also they have to increase the access. They have to increase the facilities at the training teacher colleges, to expand them. By expanding it, we can train more teachers, if they train more teachers it means we have more teachers in the system and that helps to tackle the teacher shortage. They must also focus on motivation for teachers, especially on teachers working in the hard to reach areas. We have to try to balance access with quality; we can’t do one at the expense of the other. There is no value in increasing access if we neglect quality.