Accra, June 27, GNA - Government on Friday announced a 20 per cent bonus salary enhancement package for trained teachers who would accept postings to deprived areas in the country. A personnel performance assessment is also on-going at the Ministry of Education to inform enhancement of salary and other emoluments for teachers.

Mr Alex Tettey-Enyo, Minister of Education, disclosed this at the end of a three-day National Education Sector Annual Review 2009 workshop, in Accra to evaluate and assess educational sector performance reports.

The Minister, who could not be specific on when the implementation of the package would begin, said the move was to improve the conditions of teachers to ensure the achievement of quality teaching and learning in public schools.

He also announced that the Ministry was working to revise the Education Strategic Plan to reflect the new thinking about education contained in the recent Education Reform document.

Mr Tettey-Enyo said concerns about teacher management, placement and terms of conditions of service, required dispassionate attention among stakeholders and called on teachers to change their attitudes to ensure optimum productivity.

He charged the Ghana Education Service to take steps to change teacher attitude, rationalise the distribution of teachers and also implement findings from various studies conducted to improve the placement of teachers.

On skills training, he said government had designed a new programme, National Apprenticeship Programme, which would commence this year to provide work-focused technical and vocational training for basic school graduates, who could not enter second cycle institutions. Mr Tettey-Enyo said with the establishment of the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training, there would be re-packaging of Technical and Vocational Education Training, to ensure a strong link between industry, employers and institutions, offering technical and vocational education.

Touching on education of children with special needs, Mr Tettey-Enyo said special and inclusive schools were being supported to attract children with various forms of disability. He said government would increase support for education of children with special needs to give meaning to the Disability Act, to reduce stigma and encourage parents of such children to bring them for care and treatment.

Even though the report recorded improvements in areas such as school enrolment, literacy and numeracy skills, information decentralization among other things, was said to be inadequate.