Accra: Mr. Richard Kwashie Kovey, the Convenor of the Campaign Against Privatization and Commercialization of Education (CAPCOE), has cautioned the Ghana Education Service (GES) against any plans to undertake mass transfers of teachers from urban and peri-urban schools to hard-to-reach communities. Mr. Kovey emphasized that such a move could worsen the quality of teaching and learning in many public schools, rather than addressing the shortage of teachers in deprived areas.
According to Ghana News Agency, Mr. Kovey explained that the best solution would be to temporarily freeze new teacher postings to urban schools while newly recruited teachers are posted to schools with vacant classrooms and inadequate professional teachers. He highlighted that relying on the pupil-teacher ratio as the primary basis for declaring schools overstaffed does not present the true picture of staffing needs. The ratio might suggest that some schools have more teachers than required, but it does not account for large class sizes, subject specialization, and the workload faced by teachers, particularly in densely populated urban communities.
Mr. Kovey noted that many schools in rapidly developing urban areas have classes with between 60 and 150 pupils due to inadequate infrastructure. Under ideal conditions, each classroom should have no more than 30 pupils, and preferably between 15 and 25 pupils for effective play-based teaching and learning. He pointed out that if enough classrooms were available, a class of 150 pupils would be divided into several streams, each requiring its own teacher.
Using a Junior High School with an enrollment of about 450 pupils as an example, Mr. Kovey explained that posting only seven teachers due to district pupil-teacher ratio calculations would place excessive pressure on teachers. While one teacher handles classroom instruction, another would be left with hundreds of exercise books to mark before the next day's lessons. Staffing decisions should consider the need for specialized subject teachers.
He further explained that schools in Accra often require teachers for different Ghanaian languages such as Ga, Twi, and Ewe because pupils come from diverse language backgrounds. The Career Technology subject also covers different areas that require more than one teacher to meet the interests and learning needs of students. These practical realities are often overlooked when staffing decisions rely solely on statistical ratios. Mr. Kovey questioned whether the GES was prepared to pay transfer grants if affected teachers challenged the transfers in court.
Mr. Kovey also asked whether the reduced number of teachers left in urban schools would be able to cope with increasing class sizes without affecting learning outcomes. He urged education authorities to reconsider the policy and examine the situation from the perspective of classroom teachers. He suggested that the Director General of GES, departmental heads, and consultants involved in the policy should spend one week teaching in overcrowded classrooms before making final decisions.
Mr. Kovey acknowledged the need for prudent management of public resources but stressed that long-standing educational challenges could not be solved through cost management measures alone. He called on GES to withdraw the proposed directive, review its staffing approach, and develop solutions that addressed the root causes of teacher distribution and inadequate school infrastructure. He warned that failure to review the policy could result in a learning crisis and negatively affect the quality of education across the country.