Despite calls by the Ghana Education Service [GES] for teacher unions to stay out its row with the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools
(CHASS), over the payment of subsidies, the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has waded into the debate.
CHASS had earlier issued a threat to close down Senior High Schools (SHS) nationwide, following delays by the government in paying the subsidies.
GNAT hinted that, they might declare a nationwide strike in September 2016, if the subsidy arrears of the various second-cycle institutions are not paid.
However, the GES responded, saying that GNAT’s threat is out of place as they and NAGRAT are not part of CHASS and had no stake in the matter.
NAGRAT insists that the unions have a say in the matter as the work of the teachers are affected by the situation.
“NAGRAT is not happy with the way things are because we can’t just imagine how you fail to fund education and you still expect education to function well.
We are reducing ourselves to mediocrity where people think that whether we have the resources or not, education must go on,” the President of NAGRAT, Christian Addae Poku told Citi News.
“Somebody must have the responsibility of ensuring that the right materials are provided. So that teaching and learning will go on well. So for us as teachers, we are also worried and it will have a lot of implications on our work if the right materials are not there.”
GES to punish heads if…
The Ghana Education Service (GES), at a press conference in response to CHASS’ claims, blamed non-payment of the government subsidies to public Senior High schools on the late submission of students’ data by head teachers, to enable the processing of the grants.
According to the GES, school heads are required to present students’ data on time to help fast-track the processing of the grants and subsidies.
The Director General of GES, Jacob Kor, said at the press conference that “the untimely release of subsidies and grants is partly due to the lackadaisical attitudes of some of the heads in terms of the submission of data.”
“I have the list of schools that have not submitted data for the data we are processing now. How do we process some and leave others. I will query all those heads who as at now have not submitted the data for the processing of the subsidy,” Mr. Kor said
Source - citifmonline.com
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