Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum
Four unions in the education sector are calling on the leadership of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to engage in wider consultation on the major policy change of trimester to a semester academic calendar.
The unions are Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Coalition of Concerned Teachers-Ghana (CCT-GH) and Teachers and Education Workers Union (TEWU).
In a statement jointly released by the groups yesterday, they indicated that such a major policy change should have attracted a wide consultation, adding that they therefore find both the pronouncement and the document offensive.
The groups stated emphatically that at no point in time were they consulted on such a major policy decision.
The statement noted that the “hours workers in Education require to work per day and per week have been a bother to Unions, especially when instructional and working hours have been increased unilaterally without discussions and negotiations, especially with the Unions in Education.”
It added: “Per our Collective Agreement with regards to our working Conditions, major policies such as this should come for discussion and negotiation and as Educators and speaking from a professional point of view, through discussion will bring to the fore the effects of a long school calendar on both teaching and learning and also on the health of both workers and learners.”
The groups see the decision taken to unilaterally change the school calendar into a semester one as arbitrary and an imposition by the GES on major stakeholders in the education sector.
“We therefore call on GES to immediately withdraw the policy, pending full consultations with the Unions in Education and other stakeholders, and do serve notice that failure to do so would be resisted fiercely,” the statement warned.
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