Mama Agblatsu III, a Queen of Bankoe in Ho, has observed that the inability of managers of the public education sector to dismiss or punish non-performing teachers was a major cause of low educational standards in the country.

The Queen, a former Director of Education of the Ghana Education Service was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on the sidelines of the Ho Municipal Education Annual Performance Review Meeting, 2012, in Ho on Thursday.

She said the massive personal and corporate teacher upgrading programmes, appeared to be running parallel in importance to classroom work.

Mama Agblatsu III, said there appeared to be too much dependence on certificates for promotions in the teaching service and not performance.

She also mentioned the perceived low image of the teaching profession, parental disinterest in education of children, low capacities of teachers, political interference in implementation of educational policies as other woes of the educational sector.

Mr Emmanuel Ketteku, Ho Municipal Director of Education, called for improvement in areas of management, evaluation and training, infrastructure and sanitation in the education sector.

Mr John Teku, Deputy Director of Education in charge of Planning at the Municipal Education Directorate, mentioned Kindergarten, Primary, Junior High School (JHS), Senior High School, Technical Vocational Education Training and Special School as areas that was reviewed.

Salient points that the “Status of Key Indicators” made available to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), indicated that, there were gaps in the transition rate from kindergarten to primary 1, primary 6 to JHS and quite a number of drop-outs along the way in JHS, which needed to be worked on.

Except for the JHS, commuting distance from home to school was largely within target range and teacher-pupil ratio was generally good and in many numbers of pupils to teachers, especially in the urban areas lower than the norm.

The review that involved retired educationalists, officers, members of School Management Boards, representatives of non-governmental organizations in education, trade unionists and Parent Teacher Associations and heads of education units, took the form of a two-hour conclave and presentation of reports for discussion.

The kindergarten group in a report presented by Mr David Sekyi Tometi, suggested that the public should be educated on the need for kindergarten education, to raise enrolment, fencing of school structures for security of kids and the stoppage of posting physically unfit teachers to kindergartens.

He called for a change in the notion that it was lowly qualified teachers who should teach at that kindergarten level.

Mr Edward Boachie, presenting findings on the JHS group, recommended the transfer of non-performing heads of schools.

He said there was disproportionate staffing of schools in the municipality with some having more than enough.

The underlying concern of the meeting was the poor performance at the Basic Certificate of Examination level in the Municipality with 53,20 percentage pass in 2011.

A document prepared by the Municipal Directorate of Education said supervision would be beefed up but bemoaned the low operational budget for the office.**