NAGRAT’s call for the head of chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Prof Adei, legitimate, or an act of anger spillage? -* Educate Ghana Summit deputy General Secretary.

The Dean of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Leadership and Economics at Ashesi University college, Prof. Stephen Adei, has incurred the wrath of teachers over his recent comments in which he is reported to have called teachers criminals.
The former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), Prof Stephen Adei, is reported to have described pupil teachers as “criminals”. He is quoted to have said, “Ghanaian teachers in public basic schools are ‘criminals’ because “they do not teach” yet take their salaries and send their children to private schools.”

National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) could not understand why such words could come from no mere a person than the newly appointed Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) who is an educationist and doubles as motivational speaker and, therefore, demands an apology from the heptogenarian for the comments attributed to him.
After demanding an apology from the former Rector, NAGRAT went ahead to call on the government to relieve Prof. Stephen Adei of the position of Chairman of the National Development Planing Commission (NDPC) since his pronouncements and tantrums offend the sensibilities of hard-working Ghanaian Teachers. According to them, his behaviour does not seem to have what it takes to harness our human energies towards national development.

This is not the first time the economists has showed his dislike for the teachers.
Blame teachers for poor BECE results. On April 26th, 2012, Prof Adei asked that teachers should be blamed for poor results.According to him, teachers spend less time teaching and added that in cases when they do, the process lacks quality.

Comparing the quality of public basic school tutoring to that of private basic schools, Prof. Addae said teachers should be able to teach normal children to read and write within two years even with limited teaching and learning materials like chalk and blackboard.

As if that was not enough, on 18th November, 2017,  Prof Adei told Kojo Yankson of Joy FM during a morning show that government should sack all teachers at the public basic schools.
“The child who goes to school for 3-4 years in Togo and Ivory Coast speaks French and writes French [but] our people finish Junior High School and 66%of them are functionally illiterate and we sit down there and we have Ministry of Education [and] we have 400 Directors of Education in Ghana and they are only [turning] our children [into] criminals.”
He was resolute in his advise to the government to “sack all of them; all the teachers, sack them” and pay them three months salary so they will not hit the streets to demand a severance package.

Ghana sits on educational time bomb.
As a nation, we must admit that we cannot afford to be paying trained teachers more than GH¢1,000, have better facilities to work with, and yet produce outcomes worse than the poor private schools which are manned by secondary school failures, and yet, because they are supervised very well and are accountable, they produce better outcomes.”  These were the words of the Dean of Arts and Sciences of the Ashesi University college (22-05-2018).

In joining the call of the teacher’s association in relieving the professor from his post, we, at Educate Ghana Summit, would like to point out that his continual occupation of the position is a threat to education as he has, in the past, demonstrated hatred towards the leadership of education in Ghana.

The government of the day prior to 2016 elections, stated in their manifesto that;
We aim to shift the structure and content of
our education system from merely passing
examinations to building character, nurturing
values, and raising literate, confident, and
engaged citizens who can think critically. Clauses "g" and "h" of the part of the manifesto that talks about education reads as follows:
g. teachers will be treated with respect
and we shall ensure that teachers’
salaries and allowances are paid
regularly and on time.
h. focus on the provision of incentives
that will motivate teachers, and
reward their hard work in the
classroom.

From the above, it is clear that, Prof Stephen Adei's view of teachers and that of government doesn't tally and having him occupying a position such as the chairman of the National Development Planning Commission is a threat to educational development in Ghana.

We therefore call for his removal as chair of the nation’s development planning commission.