TVET teachers to write licensure examination

Mr David Prah, the Deputy Director General, Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Service Ghana, says all teachers under the Service will begin taking the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE).

Mr Prah, speaking at the National Teaching Council’s Research Dissemination event on the rollout of GTLE, said the examination was essential to note the characteristics of a good teacher.

“Teacher Licensure Examination is critical to teacher professionalism, and a good teacher is expected to exhibit certain professional characteristics, and so these characteristics are put in the Teacher Licensure Examination,” he said.

Mr Christian Addai-Poku, Registrar of the National Teaching Council (NTC), said the teacher reforms put in place had made the country “more competitive”.

“Ghana was selected by the UK government as one of the four countries in Africa whose teachers are exempt from Qualified Teachers Status (QTS) assessment should they apply to teach in the United Kingdom,” he said.

He said the examination was a professional one to assess the people venturing into the occupation without living it out in the training institutions.

Mr Addai-Poku said seven editions of the GTLE had been written, and that the Council saw the need to conduct a study that would help understand the issues surrounding the policies and influence further reforms.

The research was done in four editions: 2018, twice in 2019; and once in 2021.

The research was on, “An Evaluation of the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination, Quality and Trend Analysis of the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examinations, and Teacher Professionalism and Professional Practice in Ghana”.

Section 59 of the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) mandates the National Teaching Council to regulate teaching in Ghana.

Also, in-service teachers, on the other hand, are required to undergo continuous professional development to improve their skills and to accrue the needed points to renew their licenses upon expiry.

The GTLE was introduced in 2018 with the aim of ensuring that prospective teachers after graduating from the teacher education institutions were filtered through the license exams.