Heads of public primary schools are calling for a hand in the selection of their teachers.
“It’s the only way that schools will be sure to get precisely the teaching staff they require,” president of the Association of Public Primary School Principals (APPSP), Ivan Clarke, said yesterday.
He described the absence of a principal’s input in the hiring of staff as “a sort of colonial thing”.
“We don’t have boards of management, and all the staff is being hired from the Ministry [of Education],” he explained. “But I think that has to change now . . . so that we can better manage the schools.
“In lots of primary schools, people are specialising and we need special skills. That’s why we are calling for that. We have not had an opportunity at all and it is necessary . . .
“If we are going to have effective schools, we must have a say.”
Clarke made the comments while talking to reporters during the association’s breakfast meeting at Accra Beach Hotel & Resort.
“The principals are saying that sometimes staff would come to you and the skills they have are skills that we don’t necessarily require at that time, we would have had that already. So we need to know exactly who is coming to us,” he said.
Clarke said that primary school principals were probably the only chief executive officers (CEOs) who did not have a say in the hiring of staff.
“The secondary principals, they sit in on the interviews, but we don’t,” he said.
“We’re not saying that we’re not getting quality staff; what we’re saying is that sometimes we don’t get the staff, the ones that we need because we would have a structure in place already and [the selection] doesn’t work well for us.”
Clarke said the primary schools had “some of the best teachers in the world”, but, like every profession, “we are going to have persons who don’t fit the bill”.
However, it was up to the principals to decide what culture and ethos the school should have, he said.
“The principal must be strong enough and fearless to say, well, we don’t like a certain type of behaviour, especially if it is negative, (whether) from teachers, from students, from parents, from whoever,” he added.
“. . . We must stick to our guns that we are going to be positive and demand a high standard.”
Clarke also said that primary school principals wanted additional clerical staff “to handle the paperwork” while they themselves addressed the many problems students brought to school. (TY)
