Sacked Teacher Trainees To Commit Suicide

SOME TEACHER Trainees who have been sacked across the country for poor performance due to a new policy by the University of Cape Coast (UCC) have threatened to commit suicide.

The new policy by the UCC explicitly states that students who fail in two re-sit examinations must be dismissed. 

Checks from a number of Colleges of Education across the country indicate that principals are applying strictly this directive by the UCC which has led to the dismissal of hundreds of students in their second and third years.

Some of the students have threatened to commit suicide if the decision is not reversed. They explained that their poor parents have hassled to pay their fees for the year only to be booted out for poor performance.

In the Eastern Region, a total of 43 teacher trainees at Mount Mary College of Education at Somanya have been dismissed. Their dismissal took effect from November 5, 2015. 

The affected students are level 200 and 300 students. The students have been sacked for failing one or more examinations.

According to some of the affected students, they are helpless and surprised by the action taken by the management of the college since some of them did not get opportunity to re-sit their failed papers. Others too claim the directive was not communicated to them before the commencement of the academic calendar.

They claim the new regulation is discriminatory since it is not applied in any tertiary institution where the GPA threshold system is used to assess students’ performance.

According to the dejected trainees, some of them had very good grades in all subjects, but failed in only one, but have been dismissed while there are many students with grade D passes throughout who were not dismissed.

The students are, therefore, calling on the Ministry of Education to intervene to fix the problem to avert a national crisis.

 When the Eastern regional reporter of the DAILY HERITAGE arrived at the Campus of Mount Mary, he observed that the affected students have started leaving the school while others were loitering around. 

The Principal of Mount Mary College of Education, Peter Atefua, told the paper that the new directive from the UCC and other bodies including Principals of Colleges of Education is meant to weed out poorly performed teacher trainees from the colleges as a way of getting quality teachers. 

He said, the dismissed teacher trainees have the second chance to re-apply and if admitted would be enrolled to start from level 100 and pay fees like continuing students without paying admission fees.