The President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Eric Angel Carbonu, who made the appeal, said they wanted to handle the issue because the headteachers were their members.

“The leadership of the unions — the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), the Coalition of Concerned Teachers of Ghana (CCT), NAGRAT, and the Teachers and Education Workers Union (TEWU) — now want to take over the issue and sit down with the GES and the Ministry of Education (MOE), to discuss and negotiate on behalf of our headmasters and headmistresses who have been interdicted.

“I am very happy to inform you that the Deputy Director-General of the GES in charge of Management Services, Stephen Kwaku Owusu, has asked us to come to his office next week,” he said.

Mr Carbonu was speaking at the launch of the 25th anniversary celebration of the founding of NAGRAT in Accra yesterday.

The anniversary is a year-long celebration, with each region assigned a particular month to celebrate the event.

The Eastern Region would kick-start the celebration in January 2024.

It would be climaxed in October 2024, with a national durbar in Accra.

Advice

The NAGRAT President entreated headmasters and headmistresses to work by the rules by adhering strictly to the directive by the MOE and GES that says that nobody should charge people any amount of money in schools in whatever form or shape.

“No matter how unpleasant it is, they are rules,” he said.

On December 10, 2023, the GES issued separate statements announcing the interdiction of 11 SHS headteachers across the Greater Accra, Ashanti and Bono Regions for their alleged involvement in charging unauthorised fees for new students.

The GES accused the headteachers of charging students various unapproved fees, including house dues, books, calculators, admission processing fees, and the printing of slips, files and hymn books.

On the journey to the formation of NAGRAT, Mr Carbonu said as far back as 1974, there were agitations by graduate teachers in the GES to form a union to, among other objectives, bargain for the welfare of members.

He said NAGRAT had over the years worked for teachers, advocated changes within the GES, sought improved service conditions for teachers, and made the teaching profession a service of choice, and not a service people joined by mistake.

Collaboration

The Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress, Dr Anthony Yaw Baah, said NAGRAT in the past 25 years achieved some successes by working closely with other teacher unions.

He charged various teacher unions to bury their differences and to work towards forming a federation of teacher unions as soon as possible if they want to continue to empower and inspire teachers.

The Africa Director of Education International, Dennis Sinyolo, urged the GES to engage the various teacher unions in policy formulations.

The Minister of Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, who launched the anniversary celebration, described the teaching profession as rewarding but challenging.

There were also solidarity messages from other teacher unions in the country.