Pupil teachers sacked in Upper Manya Krobo District

Asesewa (E/R), May 28, GNA – About 120 pupil teachers in the Upper Manya-Krobo District have been sacked for falsification of their certificates during their recruitment by the Ghana Education Service (GES).

This followed a certificate auditing exercise undertaken by the District Directorate of Education on reports of circuit supervisors and the poor performance of students in the area.

Pupil teachers are normally allowed to be recruited locally by the district directorate to fill classrooms that are empty in the rural communities under certain conditions.

According to information gathered by the Ghana News Agency (GNA) Media Auditing and Development Tracking of Projects team sponsored    by Star-Ghana, some of the sacked pupil teachers had worked for between two and six years before the anomaly was detected.

Some with education background as low as the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) managed to falsify their certificates and documents to be recruited as pupil teachers in the district.

The pupil teachers were recruited to fill the vacant classrooms for lack of trained teachers in many of the schools since most teachers refuse postings to the area due to its deprived nature.

For some time nowthe Upper Manya-Krobo District had been performing abysmally at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and the District Assembly became worried and requested the education directorate to identify factors affecting the performance of the pupils for redress.

The district in the last BECE scored 14 per cent placing them as the last but one district on the league table in the whole country and the last in the Eastern Region.

The District Assembly has formed a committee with representatives from stakeholders of education in the district to identify other factors affecting the performance of pupils in the district to enable the assembly put in measures to reverse the trend.

According to an assembly member who wants to remain anonymous, the sacking of the pupil teachers was a good step to ensure improvement in the standard of education in the district.

GNA