Non Teaching Staff deserve attention � GES director

Mrs Agnes Atagabe, Acting Upper East Regional Director of Education, has said the non teaching staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES) deserved as much attention as those in the classrooms. She said attention had always been on pupils/students, teachers, textbooks and other teaching and learning materials(Tlms), classrooms and general infrastructure in schools as if the non-teaching staff did not exist. She said the non-teaching staff formed an integral part of the educational system and their services were indispensable in the quest to enhance quality education. Mrs Atagabe was speaking at a Teachers and Educational Workers Union (TEWU) 2011 Quadrennial Regional Delegates Conference, at Bolgatanga, at the weekend. It was on the theme, �The Educational Reforms and Quality Education; The Role of the Non Teaching Staff,� targeted at helping to acknowledge the non teaching staff in their various institutions. She said the non-teaching staff played an important role in the educational system and their contribution helped to make education more relevant to the needs and aspirations of the Ghanaian society. Mrs Atagabe said the non teaching staff such as drivers, accountants, matrons, security personnel, among others, had to be recognized because they variously played a vital role in the educational system. They, therefore, needed government and other development partners to support them grow to be able to deliver to the educational system. She, therefore, urged all staff within the GES and the Ministry of Education (MOE) to exercise high level of professionalism and personal integrity because the services they rendered were very critical to quality education delivery. Speaking on the standard of Education, Mrs Atagabe called for the expansion of students� options through the introduction of new subjects to cater for the diverse abilities, aptitudes, interest of pupils/students. The educational system, she said, must ensure quality education, explaining that due to insufficient input, majority of secondary school and university graduates only had superficial knowledge of the subjects they studied in school and had no employable skills. Mr Peter K. Lumor, the national chairman of Teachers and Educational Workers� Union of GTUC, said the union was a very critical component of the education delivery system that could not be taken for granted or treated as by-products. He urged TEWU to review the entire labour scene to place the union in a positive position to enable it deal with future challenges.