Open Letter to the Director General and the Honorable Education Minister of Ghana

We, the trained teachers from the 46 Public Colleges of Education are appalled and disillusioned by the leadership displayed by you two, the glaring neglect of critical issues in the form of recruitment and employment of trained and licensed teachers echoes loudly in the ears of every well meaning Ghanaian. Your actions and inactions have left us in limbo, and uncertain about our future in the profession as we are left to wonder whether you and the government are not proud of the New 4 year B.ed Programme you introduced.

It’s very unfortunate waking up to news of the GES under the directorship of Dr Eric Nkansah planning to recruit over 10,000 unqualified and untrained teachers who have no degree nor license from the National Teaching Council through the YEA to teach, whilst trained teachers who are qualified and specifically trained to help boost and properly implement the Common Core curriculum implemented at the basic level are still left to suffer and die from hunger at home. It will interest the public to know that this same director met with CUTT on the 22nd day of March 2024 and blatantly lied that the GES is far advanced in it’s preparation to recruit newly trained teachers from the colleges and that the portal for recruitment will be opened in the month of April 2024. As we speak now, today is the 3rd day of May, 2024, yet there is still no opening of the portal for any recruitment. A trait which is reeking for any public officer, talk less of the whole director in charge of education in Ghana. No wonder, the teacher unions were vehemently against your appointment for they were able to see ahead how manipulative and distrustful you will be at the service.

For the Education Minister, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum the least said about you the better. For you are happy going round and smiling haphazardly and paying deaf ears on the issue of teacher recruitments and welfare. What you know best is to hop from one media house to the other blatantly lying to the Ghanaian people of your achievements and your grievous tendencies to embark on projects for mere aesthetic reasons whilst neglecting the most critical parts of the Ghanaian education system which needs urgent government attention.

You seem more focused on courting popularity among Senior High School (SHS) students, prioritizing short-term political gains over the long-term development of Ghana’s education system. This misplaced priority is alarming and unacceptable. Don’t forget that these very SHS students are equally our siblings and wards, and most depend on us for upkeep monies in their day to day lives or livelihood. Imagine if they come to us and we can’t provide for them, will your tablets be able to convince them otherwise?

Your political ambition should not come at the expense of Ghana’s future. We are going to be brutally honest with you, perhaps your advisers are doing you a great disservice by telling you to ignore us or it’s from your own thinking which is deceiving you and making you feel like ignoring us will help you, whichever way it is, we urge you to rethink. Even if you get the nod to partner Bawumia as his vice without we getting our postings, just know that we’ll come out with all our might, blood and every spirit in us and campaign and vote against you and the NPP government.

Our numbers are into the 10,000s and has the capacity to grow into the 20,000s and we equally have siblings, wards, cousins, nephews and nieces in the SHS’ that you are busy sharing tablets hoping to win free votes from, do the math and also the logical thinking of whose words they will heed to, their food source(us) words or the words of tablets.

For your attention, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, you are the first education minister to blatantly neglect the recruitment of trained teachers despite
our schools lacking teachers. No education minister has done what you have done in the history of this country. Most people thought NAPO was harsh and irrational but he has never for once done the grave sin of not recruiting trained teachers.

Posterity will surely judge you as the worst education minister who inadvertently ended his own career due to his own makings of chasing aesthetics and free votes instead of tackling critical issues.

You will do yourself a great disservice if you ignore this post by labelling it as a politically motivated post and deploying your so called government foot robots to comment haphazardly to fun-fool yourself instead of heading to the critical lessons you’ll learn from this post.

Remember this clearly, we the Coalition of Unemployed Trained Teachers will teach you and the NPP party a great lesson if issues surrounding our employment is not resolved with Usain Bolt’s speed.

Saying the usual thank you is not really necessary here.

[Coalition of Unemployed Trained Teachers]