President John Dramani Mahama has announced the government’s plans to decentralise the recruitment and posting of teachers as part of efforts to address the uneven distribution of educators across the country.

Speaking during his encounter with Civil Society Organisations on Monday, March 30, he said the current centralised system has contributed to a concentration of teachers in urban areas, leaving rural communities understaffed.

According to him, the government will now shift recruitment and vacancy advertising to the district level to ensure a more balanced deployment of teachers nationwide.

He explained that under the new arrangement, districts will advertise their own vacancies, while certain urban areas will be restricted due to oversubscription.

“Until we find a way of disaggregating the distribution of teachers, we will continue to have a problem. I have directed that the recruitment we are going to start, the vacancy should be declared in the district. We won’t do that centralised posting. The districts will advertise.

“Accra is closed, Kumasi is closed, Takoradi is closed. If you want to work as a teacher, you must find a district where there are vacancies to go and work because if we continue like this, everybody will continue to go into the urban areas and there will be no teachers in the rural areas,” he said.

However, he noted that there remains a significant backlog of trained teachers and nurses awaiting employment, adding that government will continue with sustained recruitment exercises to gradually absorb them into the public sector.