Mr Haruna Iddrisu, the Minister of Education, has reaffirmed the Government’s position to take pragmatic measures to integrate teacher licensure exams into the final year examination of colleges of education.
The move is part of the Government’s plan to phase out the current licensure examination model by August 30, 2025.
The Minister reiterated this directive to the Board of the National Teaching Council to ensure an opportunity was given to the previous cohort of students, who failed the examination to rewrite before the August 30 deadline.
He assured Ghanaians that the integration would not compromise the quality of educators being trained across the country.
Mr Iddrisu said this when he visited the Accra Senior High School examination centre to monitor the ongoing teacher licensure examination on Friday, a statement from the Ministry said.
A total of 37,000 candidates is taking the examination out of which 5000 candidates are rewriting and 32,000 are first time candidates.
Mr Iddrisu encouraged the candidates to excel and assured first timers of an opportunity to rewrite if they failed.
“We are honouring the manifesto pledge, albeit we will accept inputs to improve it because for us, all these should not compromise the quality of teachers that we have,” he was quoted as saying.
“We are committed to improving the quality of teachers.”
The Minister underscored the need to strengthen the professional capacity of teachers through continuous assessment, who must undergo professional development to enable them to impact students.
“When teachers teach, learners learn,” he said.