A Research conducted by a team of six researchers from the University of Education, Winneba has identified teachers from Colleges of Education perform better in the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE) than those from other Universities in the country.
The research which was conducted from August 2021 to February 2022 revealed that the scoring rate for candidates from other universities was 71 per cent while that of Colleges of Education was 79 per cent.
Dr Richardson Addai-Munumkum, a Senior Lecturer in Curriculum and Pedagogy from UEW making the presentation in Accra said the study involved more than 3000 respondents who had written the GTLE between 2018 to 2021.
He stated that the research which had the topic “An Evaluation of the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination”, was part of an effort to evaluate the GTLE introduced a couple of years ago in fulfilment of section 59 of the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) which mandates the National Teaching Council to regulate teaching in Ghana.
In fulfilment of this legal directive, the Council, since 2018 has introduced the
Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE) which is aimed at ensuring that
prospective teachers after graduating from the teacher education institutions
are further filtered through the license exams to get the right professionals
into Ghanaian schools.
In-Service teachers, on the other hand, were required to undergo continuous professional development (CPD) to improve their skills and accrue the needed points to renew their license upon expiry, adding that teachers apply the knowledge gained from CPD activities in the classroom is also of insurable interest to the Council.
The research funded by Transforming Teaching, Education and Learning (T-TEL) also had a second topic which was – “Quality and Trend Analysis of the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examinations” and the last one was “Teacher Professionalism and Professional Practice in Ghana”.
According to the Senior Lecturer, the results from the study were very interesting as against the expectations from society, citing for instance that since the universities were higher institutions, society expected their candidates to excel when it comes to the GTLE but the result proves otherwise.
The researchers recommended that there was the need for the universities to have a second look at their curriculum in relation to the National Teaching Standard (NTS) and look at how the colleges of education prepare their students for the job market for the other universities to learn from them.
He recounted how some of the findings of the research were intriguing. For instance, one of the results indicated that of the thousand sampled GTLE candidates who failed the exams, 53 per cent still indicated that the GTLE is very relevant.
Dr Christian Addai-Poku, Registrar of the National Teaching Council, was full of praise to the researchers for a good job since it would go a long way to promote the development of education in the country.
He pledged that the staff, management and Council of the NTC would continue to put in place good measures to help promote the development of education for the country.
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