Tutors of colleges of education in Ghana will be elevated to the rank of lecturers effective next month.
The elevation is part of the improved conditions of service, which the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) negotiated for during the association’s more than two months industrial action that ended last month.
CETAG declared a nationwide strike on June 14, 2024 demanding better conditions of services and payment of additional salaries for extra work performed by its members in 2022.
They had accused government of undue delay in implementing the National Labour Commission’s Arbitral Award Orders and negotiated conditions of service.
But government rejected the allegations and caused their salaries for July and August to be frozen after the association ignored its demand for the strike to be called off while negotiation continued.
After months of back and forth, a roadmap was agreed on for the implementation of the new conditions of service and their salaries for July and August be unfrozen.
Among the new service conditions to be implemented is the migration of staff of the 46 public colleges of education into a new scheme effective October.
Under the new scheme, colleges of education’s staff will be entitled to similar benefits as their counterparts at the university and will assume the nomenclature; assistant lecturers, lecturers, senior lecturers, associate professors and professors.
Speaking in an interview on Breakfast Today on Dreamz FM, Principal of the St. John Bosco’s College of Education Prof. Joseph Amikuzono said the 46 colleges of education are being mentored to become university colleges as part of the roadmap.
“Think you might have heard the news that after our strike, tutors or the teachers in the colleges whom you cal tutors are now going to be called lecturers. And per their ranks, they are going to be at par with lecturers in the traditional universities.
The conversion into university colleges, which will be effected by 4 years time, he said, is dependant on the quality of a college’s human resources and the availability of requisite facilities.
“When we have enough human resources and if our tutors are able to upgrade and get PhDs, and the quality of our teaching staff especially increases, we become university colleges. So we will no longer be St. John Bosco’s College of education but university college of St. John Bosco’s”.
He added, “This should be in the next 4 years because we are under the mentorship of traditional universities and that’s the purpose for which they are mentoring us”.
Prof. Amikuzono said he is working tirelessly to ensure that his school will be among the first institutions to be converted.
