The government of Ghana in the coming days recruit about 8,872 additional tutors for the double track programme which begins tomorrow, September 11, 2018, in over 400 selected senior high schools in Ghana.
According to the Director-General of Ghana Education Service (GES), Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, the recruitment process has already commenced.
“800 people were trained to draw up a timetable. They have done that and out of that, we have been able to identify the number of teachers that we need to supplement the existing number of teachers. It is 8,872, and if you take this, it will tell you the number of teachers that they need, and the subjects that the teachers should be recruited into,†he added.
“Under the double track, we realized that if we don’t plan properly, teachers may be teaching all-year round and they may not have time for themselves. They may break down and we will have a lot of casualties. We’ve planned it in such a way that if you are a teacher in a given track when the schools are on vacation then you will also be on vacation.
Beginning September 2018, second cycle schools in Ghana will run a semester module as part of moves to address infrastructural challenges brought on by the Free SHS programme.
To this end, some 400 out of the 696 public senior high schools have been selected to operate the system.
The schools would accommodate the over 180,000 students.
The new programme creates a calendar of two semesters in a year for the SHS 1 class, containing 81 days per each semester and 41 days of vacation for a sandwich class. Over 8,000 teachers are being recruited to handle the sandwich classes, so teachers are not be deprived of their holidays.
Under the new system, teaching hours are increased from six hours per day to eight hours per day. The new system is expected to cost GH₵323 million to implement fully.
GH₵267.2 million of this amount will go into teaching costs and GH₵55.8 million for academic interventions. Without the double-track system, the government will require GH₵1.3 billion to accommodate the increase in numbers.
Among the infrastructure needs are 622 six-unit classroom blocks at the cost of GH₵404 million, 181,993 student desks costing GH₵81.6 million, and 3,730 teachers’ furniture estimated at GH₵3.6 million.