The National Teaching Council (NTC) has served notice that all non-qualified teachers will be removed from service after 2024.
The council has, therefore, given such persons up to the end of 2024 to acquire a certificate.
“By 2024, if you are not a trained teacher, you cannot be allowed to practice,” the acting Director, Licensing and Registration of Teachers at the NTC, Francis Kwasi Addai, said.
Non-qualified in-service teachers, according to the NTC, are people who are already working as teachers in both the public and private sectors but do not have teacher education certificates.
The Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020, Act 1023 does not allow anyone into the classroom to teach without a license.
Mr. Addai advised all in-service non-qualified teachers in both public and private schools to register on the NTC portal so that when the council started the training, they could participate in it to enable them to obtain temporary certificates to practice as teachers.
The sensitization program, which started in the Greater Accra Region and will end on July 21, 2022, will be replicated in the other regions.
“We want all teachers to be trained. Just like other professionals, if you have not been trained, you cannot practice,” he stated.
Temporary certificates
Mr. Addai said after the sensitization, a five-week training program to be held on weekends would be organized for the non-qualified in-service teachers, after which they would be assessed and then issued with temporary certificates to practice for one year.
Those temporary certificates, he explained, were renewable on a yearly basis for two more years.
He said the expectation was that while having the temporary certificates, the teachers would enroll in teacher education programs to enable them to get themselves trained to become fully qualified teachers to practice.
“So all non-qualified in-service teachers in both private and public schools are supposed to attend this sensitization program to listen to what we have. They should also register on our portal so that we get their data on our system and go for the training when it starts,” he advised.
Licensing of teachers
Giving a background to the sensitization program, the Deputy Registrar at the NTC, Lawrence Sarpong, said the NTC, as the body mandated to license all teachers in the country, started the exercise to license teachers in 2018.
Mr. Sarpong, who was speaking on behalf of the Registrar of the NTC, Dr. Christian Addai-Poku, said so far it had successfully licensed close to 300,000 teachers nationwide, saying the moment had come to turn its attention to non-qualified teachers to issue them with temporary certification in fulfillment of the law.
He said the program was also meant to collect data on the number of non-qualified teachers in the country.
Mr. Sarpong clarified that the licensing of teachers was something that was going on not only in the country but globally.
“Over the years, the International Federation of Teaching Regulatory Forum has been trying its best to ensure that teachers all over the world are licensed.
“In Africa, we have the Africa Federation for Teaching Regulatory Authorities, and at a conference held in Ghana recently, the focus was to license every teacher in Africa, so that when a teacher moves from one country to another, his license will be valid to enable him to teach there,” he stated
He advised non-qualified in-service teachers to take advantage of the opportunity being given them to get the temporary certificates so that they could practice without harassment or being in breach of the law.