October 5th is World Teacher’s Day, honouring the contributions of educators across the globe. The holiday celebrates the anniversary of the 1966 adoption of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)/UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers.
The 1966 recommendation established basic benchmarks for the rights and responsibilities of educators as well as minimum standards for their preparation, recruitment, and conditions of employment.
Teachers play a pivotal role in producing the next generation of professionals in every imaginable field. In Ghana, there has been a shift from informal to formal economic functions which has made expanding access and improving the quality of formal education even more of a priority.
The Ministry of Education reports that reforms seek to achieve “improved learning outcomes, enhanced accountability and equity at all levels of the education sector”. The most fundamental goal of these reforms is to ensure that the education systems in Ghana are able to drive innovation across all of its sectors.
In recent years there has been a critical shortage of teachers in Ghana, largely due to diminished salaries, undesirable school conditions and a lack of uniformity in teaching across the country.
The Educational Strategic Plan (ESP) released in 2018 outlined structural solutions to be implemented by 2030, including incremental movement toward curricular uniformity at the basic school level to ensure that students are adequately prepared to move forward to Junior high school.
While the reforms proposed in the ESP are essential for Ghana’s education system to develop, implementation has faced challenges in regard to the distribution of resources. Many teachers report that curricular uniformity is not feasible when textbooks are not made available to students across the country.
The celebration should serve as a clarion call on government and stakeholders in the educational sector to remain dedicated to upholding the right to education of Ghanaian children as well as continuing to advocate for fair wages and adequate resources for educators in Ghana.
Increased allocation of funds toward the implementation of the ESP would allow Ghana to move forward in fulfilling the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal to “ensure inclusive and equitable education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
