NTC to sack some teachers in 2023 amid new teaching law

The management of the National Teaching Council (NTC) citing a new teaching law says it early 2023 academic year will phase out or remove all unlicensed teachers in private and public school classrooms across the country.

Registrar of the Council, Christian Addai Poku in an interview with the Daily Graphic newspaper said unqualified teachers have up to December 31, 2022, to possess a licence before they can teach in any school in the country.

Teachers who fail to acquire the NTC license card, the Executive Director of the NTC said will be prosecuted. He also indicated that private school proprietors who employ unlicensed teacehrs after the deadline will be sanctioned.

“Now, we are moving into the licensing enforcement stage and from January 2023, anybody who does not have the authorisation (licence) to teach, the NTC will deal with that person because the law is clear; you can be prosecuted for not owning a licence and teaching,” he told Daily Graphic.

Among other things, Addai said Section 79 of the Education Regulatory Bodies Act, 2020 (Act 1023) stated that, “A person shall not knowingly or negligently employ a person as a teacher in an institution unless the teacher is registered under this Act.

“A person who contravenes this commits an offence and is liable to summary conviction to a fine not less than 500 penalty units and not more than 1000 penalty units or to a term of imprisonment of not less than six months and not more than one year,” the Registrar told the newspaper.

Dr Poku stressed that his outfit next year would strictly enforce the teaching licensing law to ensure person was in the classrooms without a licence and was not applying for it. “The NTC would go after them from January,” he added.

“We would be sending inspectors to schools to go and check. So we move to the school, take the data of the teachers to find out whether everybody is licensed,” Dr Christian Addai stated in the discussion with the Graphic.

The National Teaching Council (NTC) Registrar further explained that “the law does not put the punishment on those who are teaching only but also on the person who is employing – both public and private schools.”

He also said teachers yet to sit for the Ghana teacher licensure examination (GTLE) to be certified as qualified or professional teachers can apply for a temporary licence which is renewable for two academic years.

“If you don’t do that and we come to the school, we will not only prosecute the teacher but we would also prosecute the person who employed the teacher,” the Director in charge of licensing teachers noted.

Asked why the law was not enforced all this while, he said the delay was for NTC to sensitise teachers to the need to be licensed. “But it was to educate them on the forthcoming law, which was subsequently passed in 2020,” he explained.