The Minister of Education, Haruna Iddrisu, has assured teachers that the government will review Ghana’s pension system to improve retirement benefits and guarantee better post-retirement security for teachers.
According to the Minister, the review is aimed at addressing long-standing institutional and administrative challenges in the pension system and improving lump sum payments for retirees.
Mr Iddrisu gave the assurance while addressing delegates at the 7th Quadrennial National Conference of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) in Accra on Monday, January 5.
“Let me assure you that His Excellency John Dramani Mahama will reset pensions with the revision of Act 766 to respond to some of the institutional and administrative challenges confronting its implementation,” he said.
“This is also to improve, if possible, what will become the lump sum in order to guarantee post-retirement security.”
The Education Minister also described the recent West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results as worrying and said the situation was of concern to the President, the Ministry of Education and teachers across the country.
“The outcome of the West African Senior School Certificate Examination was worrying and of concern to the President, the Ministry of Education, and to all of you,” he stated.
Mr Iddrisu called for honest reflection on the factors contributing to the performance of students.
“I want to address you as brothers and sisters and challenge you to ask whether the outcome of WASSCE reflects the quality of our teachers or the quality of our teaching. How can we improve the performance of our students?”
Mr Iddrisu explained that available information showed that many students struggled not because they lacked knowledge, but because they could not apply what they had learned.
“I am reliably and adequately informed that much of the crisis of the poor performance had to do with the application of knowledge to real-life situations,” he said.
“Interpreting information critically, reasoning through unfamiliar problems, and expressing ideas clearly and coherently.”
He said that the main difficulty lay in students’ understanding of how to apply knowledge, rather than in teaching alone.
“So much of the difficulty had to do with students’ understanding of matters relating to application. Not to blame Excellency John Dramani Mahama and the Ministry of Education for the poor performance of our students.”
The Minister also pointed to the double-track system as a contributing factor to challenges in secondary education.
generally on the quality of provision of secondary education.
“All of us should not lose sight of the lack of adequate contact hours between teachers and students arising out of the introduction of the double-track system and its consequences generally on the quality of provision of secondary education,” he said.
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