In all, 14,818 teachers are taking the GTLE. They are made up of 6,659 fresh candidates and 8,159 others who are testing.

The subject-based means that teacher trainees are going to be examined on their area of speciality, unlike previously when it was a generalised examination. During a visit to one of the examination centres at the Accra College of Education, a Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, assured the candidates that the examination would enable them to teach in Ghana and anywhere in the world.

Assurance

The deputy minister said the education ministry was seeking financial clearance to post as many that would pass to various schools and communities where their services would be needed the most.

"You have been trained in your various colleges of education and universities. The best of skills have been imbibed in you and this examination is one that is essential," Rev. Fordjour said.

He said the examination was to ensure they were the best professionals to deliver wherever they found themselves. Moreover, the Deputy Education Minister said it was also to ensure that they proudly and confidently walked into their classrooms wherever they were posted, knowing that they were professionals and had passed the requisite tests and had their licences to teach.

“I always say that the most crucial flight anyone can be on is education. But you will never be on a flight if the pilot doesn't have a licence to fly. Therefore, when you sit for this examination and pass to obtain your licence, it gives you the legitimate confidence to be among members of our noble profession," he said.

Having wished the candidates the best of luck in the examination, Rev. Fordjour later told the media that the examination was to ensure that after teachers were trained in the various colleges of education and universities, they possessed the minimum requirement to teach in classrooms in the country.

Those standards, he said, were the minimum requirement for any teacher to teach anywhere in the world. Rev. Fordjour said for the past six years that the GTLE had been implemented in the country, it had lifted the standard of teaching.

Outcomes

“It has impacted on outcomes that have led to improvements in the education sector,” he emphasised, saying he had not seen any profession in any part of the world that was as important as teaching.

The deputy minister, who was accompanied by the Board of Chairman of the National Teaching Council, Anis Haffar, said the GTLE was a policy that had come to stay. For his part, Mr Haffar said one of the most essential things of any profession, especially teaching, was for people to understand that teachers had to be licensed as professionals.

He said there was no legitimate profession anywhere in the world without licensing. “The most important thing now is how teachers can stay abreast of development consistently,” he said.

In addition to licensing, there had to be lifelong learning, Mr Haffar said about Continuous Professional Development (CPD).