MoE reveals date for NTC College of Education entrance test
After postponing the conduct of the College of Education entrance test previously slated for August 2022, the Ministry of Education (MoE) has hinted the National Teaching Council (NTC) 2023 will administer the national examination.
Chief Director at the Ministry of Education, Divine Ayidzoe who disclosed this at a conference on teacher training with stakeholders said the College entrance examination will be based on two core subjects; Mathematics and English.
“If we are talking about teacher quality, I think it is time. Even the licensure exam data shows that trained teachers who have written BECE, and WASSCE and undergone scrutiny at UCC and UEW cannot write a single sentence
How are they going to teach? So there is a call that from next year, entrance exams in Mathematics and English should be conducted so that we get the best to enter our Colleges of Education,” the MoE official told stakeholders.
Dubbed Ghana Basic Education Skills Examination Test (GBEST), the new exams will ensure students seeking to pursue teacher education in various public teacher training institutions are qualified to be trained as professional teachers.
Meanwhile, the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has called for the cancellation of the College of Education entrance test to be conducted for applications seeking to pursue teacher education in public Colleges.
in a statement copied to AcademicWeek.com, the leadership of the teacher union said the National Teaching Council’s (NTC) decision to conduct a College entrance examination for WASSCE graduates is a step in the wrong direction.
“NTC once again is attempting to craft a policy and arbitrarily foist it on the education enterprise. the NTC should cease being a Regulator and Implementer; it does not have the mandate to be so,” the General Secretary of GNAT said.
The teacher union in the press release dated February 8, 2022, said it is “tired and wearied with this idea of throwing out policies and programmes into the educational milieu without consultations with bodies which matter
We wish to reiterate, that we are not against reforms to education; we stand for the best for education in the country; however, we won’t stand for policies, programmes and pronouncements off-the-cuff,” the Teacher Association noted.
GNAT Secretary, Mr Thomas Musah in the statement said the NTC as a Regulator and not an Implementer does not have the mandate to administer any sort of entrance examination for prospective students seeking College admission.
“The Agencies vested with the powers must be allowed to work, and come out, only when the proper consultations have taken place and consensus reached. We ask for nothing more than this,” he said in a letter to Education Minister.
