GNAT unhappy with punishment for school heads who collected printing fees

The Greater Accra Region Chapter of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has complained about what it calls the unfair demotion of 110 headteachers in the Ga West District.

In a statement, GNAT called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) managements and the Ga West Directorate of Education to withdraw the purported demotion in the interest of “providing quality education”.

The affected headteachers allegedly charged students for printing fees, contrary to GES’ regulations.

But the GES, however, does not consider its actions towards the teachers a demotion.

The Public Relations Officer of the GES, Cassandra Twum Ampofo, said the headteachers have been reassigned to teaching duties while maintaining their ranks.

She noted that the teachers admitted their faults and “came out to apologise.”

“We have just asked them to go back to the classroom. They are going to teach in the classroom just like their colleagues who are also of the same rank teaching in the classroom.”

The GNAT statement, signed by the Greater Accra Regional Secretary for GNAT, Le-Roy Levi McNara, also admitted that the headteachers had erred but stressed that the teachers were compelled by circumstances to collect the money.

“While the GNAT Greater Accra does not condone any wrongdoing on the part of the headteachers, we do no equally support the fact that the GES management would blatantly refuse to release the needed funds for the running of the schools and the printing of exam questions only to turn around and heavily punish Heads for collecting monies from parents to print exam questions.”

“The headteachers had been forced to run their schools on credit in the first term, some of whom had utility bills running in excess of GHc5,000, the GES had failed to release the base capitation grant for the first term, and never did so right up to the third term.”

GNAT added in the statement that it condemned “the practice of the GES not releasing the funds at all or not releasing at the right time forcing the heads to run the schools on credit.”