Government has been urged to proceed with caution by consulting stakeholders in education before the roll out the double-track semester system in Senior High Schools.
Deputy Greater Accra Regional Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), Felix Owusu Ansah says government’s failure to consult them on the tracking system shows disrespect and how teachers have been taken for granted.
“We are still wondering why the Ministry and government as a whole would like to keep civil society, even teacher unions, in the dark on such an important policy; especially, when the Coalition is represented on the Ministerial Advisory Board. They have taken teachers for granted and its time government respects us”, he said.
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Speaking on Adom FMs Morning Show, Dwaso Nsem Friday, Mr Owusu Ansah said teacher unions were only informed about the policy and not consulted but.
What is the double track system?
In a single-track system, students and staff are in school or vacation at the same time within an academic year.
But the double year-round system divides the entire student body and staff into two different tracks. So while one track is in school, the other is on vacation.
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The rotation sequence will depend on the year-round calendar being used. In Ghana, the school calendar starts from September and ends in April with three different terms.
The first term is from September to December, the second term starts in January and ends in April while the third term is from April/May to July.
But contributing on the same show, Mr Samuel Frank Dadzie, General Secretary of National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) said “In the document that I saw, this policy is supposed to last for only five years because within the next five years, what we are hearing from the corridors of power is that government would have then built infrastructure to accommodate all the two streams.
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“When that happens, what would you do with those teachers? We need to sit down and discuss this situation thoroughly as a nation. Let us not rush into something that will spite our faces over time,” he noted.