The Registrar of the National Teaching Council (NTC), Dr Christian Addai-Poku, says the government will soon introduce an entrance assessment as part of the selection process for teacher education admissions.
The measures, he stated, would help reduce the mass failures in the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination.
At a press briefing on Wednesday, July 12, Dr Addai-Poku said the Ministry and NTC were working to strengthen regulatory systems for teacher education institutions and to ensure compliance.
“The NTC will work to ensure that there are enough reading materials to enable the teacher trainees to prepare well for the examination,” he said.
Dr Addai-Poku said the Teacher Licensure Exams were introduced in September 2018 as part of efforts by the government to improve teacher professionalism and the quality of teaching.
The examination is to assess the competence and skills of newly trained teachers before they enter the classroom.
The Council has conducted 10 licensure examinations in the areas of essential professional skills, literacy, and numeracy.
Dr Poku disclosed that out of the 7,728 total candidates who sat for the examination last May, only 1,277 representing 16.5 per cent of that number passed the test.
The other 6,451 candidates failed the examination.
Dr Addai-Poku cited the introduction of serialisation or item differentials that prevented the candidates from cheating as one of the reasons for the mass failures.
Another reason was the requirement for candidates to sit the examination in institutions other than their parent establishments, which also curbed some of the malpractices.
“Judging from the examination results, it is clear that some candidates were not fit to even enter teacher education institutions,” he said.
Dr Addai-Poku said the examination appeared to question the quality of products from a distance and sandwich programmes, as most of the failures were candidates from distance training institutions.
Giving statistics to support the claim, he said that from the 2019 – 2022 examination, the regular candidates from the colleges of education saw 61,882 candidates sit for the exams, of which 45,337 passed and 16,545 failed.
However, distance, sandwich, and online educational institutions saw a total of 52,137 candidates sit the exams, out of which 29,383 failed and 22,755 passed.
Candidates had only one chance to write the examination in December 2023. In 2024, the examination would be subject-based.
The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum said the Ministry had set up a committee chaired by Reverend Samuel Ntim Fordjour, the Deputy Minister of Education.
The Committee will delve into the causes of the mass failure and look at the quality of students admitted into the teacher educational institutions and the selection procedures, among others.
The Minister said the Ministry was determined to ensure more opportunities for the trainees by giving them the platform to redeem themselves and pass the licensure examinations.
He said the Ministry was working to set up processes to ensure alignment between stakeholders in the educational space to address the causes of mass failures in the examinations.