The Chairman of the Ghana Education Service (GES) Council, Mr Michael Nsowah says the semester policy currently suspended by the Minister for Education was to enable teachers to pursue higher education during vacations.
The GES chairman stated that his outfit during a meeting with the Teachers union and other stakeholders in the education sector, came to a conclusion that Teachers will be given the opportunity to advance their qualifications during vacation.
“So many things were taken into consideration and in this particular case, after meetings, we realised that we need to give the teaching fraternity the opportunity to upgrade their qualifications,” the GES Chairman told host of Newsfile.
“So with the unions, we said ‘let us find a specific block of time when the teachers are free and can go to classes’. So we agreed with all three teacher unions on all this and that was incorporated in the timetable,” he further explained.
However, the decision for government basic schools to run the 2-term academic calendar according to Mr Nsowah was based on the fact that many teachers leave their classes unattended to participate in sandwich programmes they have enrolled in.
In view of this, public basic school teachers with the semester system says the GES chairman, would be able to attend classes to further their education to upgrade themselves during 10 weeks of vacation.
“When we finished that calendar, there were about 10 weeks for holidays where those who have enrolled on the distance courses will be able to attend their eight-week sandwich courses,” Mr Nsowah Micheal said on Saturday.
