A lecturer at the Kumasi Polytechnic, Professor Alexander Ayogyam, has blamed the falling standards of education, especially in rural areas, to the lack of incentives to teachers who have been posted to rural areas.
Comparing the standard of education in rural areas and towns, he said the standard in the rural areas had been abysmally low, attributing it to unqualified teachers who cannot teach the pupils to study well.
Speaking to the media in Kumasi, he said apart from the fact that there were no classrooms and in most cases furniture too, if the teachers handling them were qualified enough, the pupils would have been motivated enough to learn.
Prof. Ayogyam also blamed the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service for their inability to draw up policies which will be enticing enough for trained teachers to accept postings to the rural areas.
He suggested that in order to get well-trained teachers into those areas, the strategies which the ministry uses to motivate teachers in towns should be different from that of the rural areas, arguing that “because there are no social amenities they will suffer more.”
He, therefore, admonished the Ministry of Education to, as a matter of urgency, design what he called an “extra pay scheme” for rural teachers. to encourage them to be more dedicated whenever they are posted to such communities.
“We can build all the nice edifices but the pupils will fail due to lack of trained teachers to teach them.
…If I teach in Bantama, which is the middle of town, and I have been transferred to a village where there is no potable water or electricity but with the same salary I used to take, why won’t I rather lobby to be posted to a town where I will have access to what will make my life better as a human being,” he said.
He suggested that teachers posted to these areas should have some top up on their salaries or even be given what he called thirteenth month salary to motivate them.
The learned professor feared that if steps were not taken early enough to curb the situation, the country in the next few years, will record a very high level of illiteracy in the rural areas which will ultimately affect them.
The lack of incentives for teachers in rural areas has been in the news for years now.
Most teachers attributed their unwillingness to accept postings to deprived areas to the lack of amenities which affect them in the profession.
Even though successive governments have been aware of the effects of the situation, very little has been done to motivate teachers who go into such areas.
Unfortunately the effects of the situation have begun drawing signs on the lives of children in rural areas, and yet not much has been seen from the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service to mitigate it.
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