293 staff resigned from GES in 2021 — Prof. Opoku-Amankwa

Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa - Director-General, Ghana Education Service

The Director-General D-G of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, says only 293 staff resigned from the service in 2021.

According to him, the total attrition from the payroll of the GES is 8,209, made up of 6,834 teaching staff and 1,375 non-teaching staff.

Prof. Opoku-Amankwa gave the explanation as an official response to figures released by the Member of Parliament for the Builsa South Constituency, Dr Clement Apaak, that 44,000 out of the 284,000 teachers left the teaching profession in 2021.

In response, the Ministry of Education issued a statement, basing its statistics on the Education Management Information Service (EMIS), a source Dr Apaak quoted in his submission, stated that the figure was rather 34,424 instead of the 44,000.

Clarification

In an interview with the Daily Graphic Thursday, January 27, however, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said in determining staff attrition in the service, the right source of information should be the payroll and not the EMIS.

The attrition represents the number of staff who left the service either voluntarily or involuntarily and includes resignations, termination of appointments, dismissals, retirement and vacation of post.

“Any attempt to use EMIS data to determine staff attrition will give a deceptive picture,” the D-G further explained.

Vacation of post topped the list with 3,623, while compulsory retirement stood at 2,874, and terminated assignment followed with 1,212.

A total of 144 teachers went on study leave without pay, 44 of them passed on, 12 are categorised under audit suspension – unaccounted for, five found in double mechanisation, while two of them were dismissed in the year under review.

Regional breakdown

Giving the regional breakdown, Prof. Opoku-Amankwa said the Ashanti Region topped in the attrition rate with a total number of 2,099, made up of 1,775 teaching staff and the remaining 324 being non-teaching staff.

The North East Region, according to him, recorded the least with 48 teaching staff and 15 non-teaching staff, bringing the total number to 63.

The Eastern Region recorded the second highest number of attritions with a total of 1,041, while the Central and Greater Accra regions followed with 837 and 806 respectively.

Five-hundred-and fifty-five and 522 teachers in the Volta and Western regions took the 6th and 7th positions respectively, while the Northern, Bono, Upper East, Bono East, Ahafo and Upper West regions followed with 433, 419, 348, 256, 251 and 210 respectively. Oti recorded 143, while Savannah had 87.