Pre-tertiary education unions have accused the Ministry of Education of taking advantage of the lockdown period to smuggle the Pre-Tertiary Education Bill into parliament for passage – a bill they have initially raised objections to.

They have therefore cautioned the ministry and parliament to desist from the passage of the bill, which was included in the Order Paper last Friday to be laid before lawmakers for discussion and subsequent enactment.

The unions comprise Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Tertiary Education Workers Union (TEWU), and Coalition of Concerned Teachers Ghana (CCT-Gh).

Thomas T. Musah, General Secretary of GNAT, who spoke on behalf of the unions, said at their last meeting with the ministry, which was represented by Deputy Minster Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum, the unions were asked to put their inputs together and submit them to the next meeting for discussion.

“We were in the process of doing this when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and the country went on lockdown,” he said. The inclusion of the bill in the parliamentary Order Paper “for discussion and subsequent passage therefore comes to the unions as a rude shock and an exercise of bad faith,” he added.

The reforms envisaged by the bill will place Senior High Schools under the management of Regional Education Directorates, which in turn will be under the Regional Coordinating Councils.

Basic schools will be managed by Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies, while technical and vocational schools will be managed and run by their own director-general, independent of the Ghana Education Service (GES).

The unions argued that if the bill is passed, the GES would be shorn of its power and become a feeble coordinator.

“The teaching profession would be destabilized and the unified service currently in place would be broken or dismembered,” Mr. Musah said.

He added that the unified conditions of service under which teachers operate would be broken, with teachers at risk of being manipulated and subjected to the whims and caprices of the assemblies.

“In the spirit of unity, harmony and organic solidarity, the pre-tertiary education unions express their abhorrence for the arrangement and reject it in no uncertain terms,” Mr. Musah said.