The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has backed the Ghana Education Service (GES) directive that teachers go through an aptitude test before they are promoted.
The GES says this will ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the promotion process.
READ ALSO: Teachers should be promoted based on their output, not aptitude test – African Education Watch
Angel Carbonu, the President of NAGRAT, says the move is better than the interview system currently being used because it eliminates the human factor, and also less expensive.
“People go for the interview and through some mysterious means or reasons, they are just not passed…So we have met with the GES and we have all agreed that an aptitude test depending on the rank that one finds himself will be the way to go because it takes out human influence and also contributes to the reduction of cost that leads to the delay of the interviews. So we feel that the aptitude test is the better option than the man to man interview that was leading to several problems,” he spoke to Citi News.
However, the African Education Watch does not side with NAGRAT as they believe teachers in the country should be promoted based on their output in the classroom rather than accessing them with an aptitude test.
READ ALSO: Teachers will now undergo aptitude test before promotion – GES announces
Executive Director of the African Watch Kofi Asare described as GES’ move as retrogressive adding the move will not assure accountability in the country’s educational system.
”I thought that we were departing from this test-based assessment system to a more practical way of accessing teacher performances for that matter promoting teachers. I thought that as we are entering towards greater levels of educational accountability and promoting learning outcome attainments, we will be adapting to certain strategies where teachers are accessed based on the learning outcomes of children they teach as a means of enhancing teacher performances and promoting accountability of teachers to learning outcome”.
”But here is the case we are going back to the aptitude test to promote teachers instead of using the monitoring and evaluation system to improve the learning outcome of students. So I think that this move is not progressive and does not assure teacher accountability and for that matter teacher accountability towards learning outcomes,” he added.
