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Minister of Education, Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh
Education Minister Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh has said that under the leadership of President Akufo-Addo, Ghana ranked second to China in a survey of countries that respect and do more for teachers.
The survey was conducted by the Global Teacher Status Index (GTSI) in 2018, but the report was released Monday by the Varkey Foundation.
Ghana ranks second out of 35 countries when it comes to people’s implicit, unconscious and automatic views on the status of teachers, according to the report, with only China ranking higher.
Speaking in Nation Building Updates on the topic: “The teacher in the quality education center”, Matthew Opoku stated that it is under the PNP that the Ministry of Education can boast fewer teacher strikes because according to him the Ghana Union of teachers appreciate what is done for them.
“A published world ranking study shows that Ghana ranked second in the teacher survey conducted by the Global Teacher Status Index,
“In a survey of 35 countries with 35,000 participants, they found that for countries that respected teachers and did more for teachers, this improved their economy, and Ghana came second after China,” he said.
The GTSI 2018 found that countries that have higher teacher status are more likely to see higher student achievement.
In this new report, the authors, Professor Peter Dolton of the University of Sussex and Dr Robert De Vries of the University of Kent, reevaluate the GTSI data in relation to the new PISA 2018 scores released last year and confirm the link between teacher status and student performance. it remains.
Crucially, they find a remarkably strong positive correlation between implicit teacher status and PISA 2018 results.
PISA scores are significantly higher in countries where people implicitly view teachers more positively.
Implied Teacher Status ranks countries based on respondents’ automatic and disregarded impressions of teachers asking respondents to indicate as quickly as possible whether, for example, they think teachers are trustworthy or unreliable, inspirational or uninspiring, supportive or indifferent, intelligent or not very intelligent, among others. word associations.
The new report also seeks to explain for the first time why implicit teacher status varies between countries.
It finds that teachers generally enjoy a higher status in wealthier countries and in countries that allow a greater fraction of public funding for education.
Ghana’s spending on education as a percentage of public spending is 22%.
In Italy, which ranks 24th in the implicit teacher category, by comparison it is only 8.1%.
It also finds that teachers generally have a lower status in countries where a higher proportion of the teacher workforce is female. This suggests a level of possible gender stereotypes or that social sexism can harm the status of teachers in countries where the profession is more represented by women.
The gender composition of the workforce is part of a complex web of social factors that determine how people implicitly view teachers in their country.
In Ghana, 25.2% of secondary school teachers are women, compared to 82.1% in Russia, the highest of all surveyed countries that ranked 23rd in the implicit teacher category.
Sunny Varkey, founder of the Varkey Foundation and the Global Teacher Prize, said:
“This report shows that respecting teachers is not just an important moral duty, it is essential to the educational outcomes of a country.
“Since the coronavirus pandemic emerged, we have seen 1.5 billion students around the world affected by school and university closures. In these unprecedented times, now more than ever it is necessary to do everything possible to ensure that young people around the world have access to a good teacher.
“We created the Global Teacher Prize, which sheds light on the extraordinary work that teachers do around the world, to inspire people to talk about the great work of teachers.
“We have seen teachers do their best to keep young people learning around the world amid the Covid pandemic. Teachers around the world are to be applauded for their creativity, compassion, and determination to fulfill every child’s right to a good education. “
Dr. Matthew Opoku Prempeh noted that Ghana achieved this feat by strictly following the Comprehensive Teacher Policy approved by Cabinet based on UNESCO benchmarks as part of the Strategic Education Plan 2018-2030.
The Strategies include teacher recruitment and retention, teacher training, teacher deployment, career paths, teacher employment and terms of service, teacher compensation and reward, teacher standards, teacher accountability, and school governance.
