The Ghana Education Service (GES) has begun the process to recruit 16,500 trained teachers who completed the colleges of education last year.

Earlier this year, the GES recruited 1,500 teachers in a special mop-up exercise for trained teachers who completed their studies in the 2017/2018 academic year but could not be recruited because they had challenges with their papers.

According to the service, interested successful candidates could apply for recruitment to work where their services were needed.

The Director-General of the GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, who briefed the Daily Graphic yesterday, asked interested applicants to access the GES official website: www.gespromotions.gov.gh, to complete online application forms and upload all valid certificates before the close of October 30, 2020.

“This recruitment is strictly for applicants who completed colleges of education in 2019,” he emphasised.

Graduate trained teachers

Reacting to information that unemployed graduate teachers from the various universities were planning to picket and hold a peaceful demonstration, the director-general gave them an assurance that they had been factored into the recruitment process this year.

He said after the process for those from the colleges of education, the “the next batch will be for those from the universities and so they do not have to be worried”.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa added that immediately after the current batch had been recruited, the next group would be those who did Education in the various universities and had also completed the Ghana Teacher Licensure Examination (GTLE) and the mandatory national service.

“They will be considered for recruitment into the GES to teach in senior high schools (SHS), while the third batch will be the non-teaching category,” he added, with the assurance that all the recruitments would be done before the end of the year.

Overall, the GES was expected to recruit about 93,724 teachers by the close of the year, he declared.

2017 to 2019

Touching on the recruitment of staff of the GES between 2017 and 2019, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said 66,357 teaching and non-teaching staff were recruited.

Giving a breakdown, he said in 2017, some 33,810 teaching and non-teaching staff were recruited, made up of limited recruitment of 19,640 teaching and non-teaching staff and 14,170 newly trained teachers.

For 2018, a total of 8,872 teachers were recruited to augment the number of teachers in the SHSs because of the introduction of the double-track system.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said in 2019, some 23,675 teaching and non-teaching staff were recruited, made up of 1,445 non-teaching staff for schools under the double-track system, 14,500 newly trained teachers and 7,730 non-teaching staff under the GES/Youth Employment Agency.