Private school teachers to be given NTC licence
Education in the country has received a paradigm shift since the introduction of the Education Regulatory Bodies Act -2020, Act 1023.
The Act reveals that the National Teaching Council, NTC, has a major role to play when it comes to teacher professionalism.
In a recent meeting held between the National Teaching Council, NTC and some Private School leaders showed that the NTC is committed to registering and enrolling all teachers from both Private and Public schools on a common professional platform.
Below is the exegesis for the intent made by the National Teaching Council;
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According to Mr Gyetuah- the Executive Director of the Ghana National Council of Private Schools, schools need to understand and appreciate that, the temporarily licensing is issued to the Service Institution to cover teachers and not to the teacher to cover the Service Institutions, hence the School is liable to pay and keep the license.
Details to the statement
- The license is issued to the teacher through the school. Without the school the said teacher cannot be issued with the ntc temporal teacher license.
This is to ensure that the teacher is monitored, supervised and also assisted to enroll or take programmes to upgrade themselves.
This will also bring sanity into the system where the regulator would be convinced that the issuance of the licensing can easily be monitored and determined progression in the teaching fraternity.
- The temporarily licensed teacher status ceases to function immediately the person leaves the initial service institution that registered him or her.
This would help to solve the issue of low retention rate in the private schools that negatively affects learning outcomes.
This also means that those who don’t desire to be teachers would not be employed in private schools.
- The labour law and workmen’s compensation law place legal obligations on both employer and employee for CPD.
The law expect that , employers create career development programmes for their employees support them also with financial repayment or bonuses to upgrade.
The same law puts injunction on employees to show committment to any arrangement leading to his or her CPD portfolio building. And also honour any responsibility agreed upon leading to his or her CPD portfolio building.
- The license is kept in the bosom of the service institution ( school) therefore the legal obligation to pay for it’s issuance.
- the section 80(1) of Act 1023 of Education Regulatory Bodies Act grants (may grants) authorisation of employment of persons who do not meet permanent licensing requirements in an institution or deprived communities, after the institute has applied to NTC.
This means that, the authorisation is not transferable, ie
1, transfer the license from school A to School B as a teacher by just changing a school is not allowed, unless the new school starts the registration processes again with NTC.
2, transfer of the license from one teacher to another teacher is same not allowed.