Teacher Kwadwo ‘blasts’ GES over new textbooks

Comedian and teacher Michael Owusu Afriyie, popularly known as Teacher Kwadwo, has criticised the Ghana Education Service (GES) for not making textbooks available to public school teachers.

As part of ongoing changes in Ghana’s education sector, GES launched a new education curriculum for kindergarten to primary six pupils in April 2019.

However, Teacher Kwadwo is frustrated because GES has approved textbooks that have not been supplied to government schools.

“GES has approved the books but is yet to supply government schools with copies after two years meanwhile, the private schools are buying them, and these pupils will at the end of the day write the same paper,” the worried teacher observed.

“GES is the most confused, inconsistent institution in Ghana,” he stressed.

Venting his anger, the teacher revealed, “GES has changed the school curriculum twice since I joined the service”, yet he is compelled to spend his meagre salary on textbooks to teach children.

“Initially, we hand wrote our lesson notes, then the curriculum was changed, and we had to download the lesson notes online, but we are back to handwriting the notes after the second change, which is a retrogression,” he lamented.

“We have had a new curriculum for the past two years without textbooks, yet the school has been running, so tell me which textbooks are the teachers using to teach,” he quizzed.

According to Teacher Kwadwo, some teachers have had to improvise while others have purchased textbooks that aid in teaching and learning.

“I make GHC1500 a month which is woefully inadequate, but for the love I have for the job, and other monies I get from the side, I have purchased nine textbooks to help me teach (but) there are other colleagues of mine who cannot afford to get these textbooks”.

“So at the end, the student suffers,” he complained in an interview with Youtuber Zion Felix, monitored by theghanareport.com.