Teacher Trainees’ Association of Ghana communiqué on education

COMMUNIQUE ISSUED DURING THE 18TH ANNUAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE TEACHER TRAINEE ASSOCIATION OF GHANA (TTAG) HELD AT THE TAMALE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION, TAMALE FROM THURSDAY 28TH FEBRUARY TO 3RD MARCH, 2013.

PREAMBLE;
We the delegates of the eighteenth (18th) National Annual General Assembly of the Teacher Trainees’ Association of Ghana (TTAG) upon deliberations on the theme “QUALITY EDUCATION THROUGH PROPER ENHANCEMENT OF TEACHER TRAINEES” do hereby state the following;

We would like to acknowledge and congratulate the president of Ghana, H.E John Dramani Mahama on his election as the President of the Republic of Ghana in the 2012 elections.

We also acknowledge and thank the political parties and the good people of Ghana for their good conduct in the just ended 2012 general elections especially for maintaining peace. We further appeal to all factions of the political divide to have trust in the justice system of the country in order to strengthen our democracy.

In as much as we appreciate the effort of the government in the payment of trainees allowances, we humbly appeal to the government to rectify the anomalies in the payment of these allowances.

We welcome the initiative of the government to build ten new colleges of education, however we humbly appeal to the government and other stakeholders to provide more infrastructure for the existing colleges of education to meet the tertiary status especially facilities for French offering colleges of education such as Mount Mary College of Education (Somanya) and science laboratory for all colleges of education, sports facilities, road network, pipe-borne water and other needful facilities.

We further call on government and other stakeholders to provide trainees with the requisite teaching and learning materials such as syllabi and textbooks to enhance our training while in college.

We passionately appeal to the Institute of Education, University of Cape Coast (UCC) to reconsider its decision to withdraw third year students who have more than two referrals by allowing them to complete their teaching practice and withhold their results until they have fully covered all their referrals.

We again appeal to the Institute of Education, University of Cape Coast (UCC) to correct all irregularities concerning the results of trainees.

We appeal to the government to put a mechanism in place to supervise the judicious use of funds allocated to the various colleges of education for developmental projects.

We further call on the government to come out with a long term national educational policy with a strong legal backing that cannot be unnecessary changed because of political reasons.

We also appeal to the government to intercede on behalf of trainees not to pay any amount to COPY GHANA since trainees do not photocopy copyright documents but rather handouts from tutors and past questions.

We appeal to the Institute of Education to extend the period for the end of semester examinations to at least a month to ease the pressure on trainees.

We again appeal to the Institute of Education to reconsider its decision to withhold the results of students offering special courses who were admitted into college with D7 and below before the enactment of the law.

We entreat the Ministry of Education (MOE) and Ghana Education Service (GES) should consider posting newly trained teachers to villages and leaving pupil teachers in the cities.