The Executive Director of Africa Education Watch has called on the government to rethink the payment of allowances to teacher trainees in the colleges of education.

According to the Executive Director, the payment of such allowances has never been a motivation for teachers to accept postings to the deprived areas of the country.

Mr. Kofi Asare giving statistics to back his claim on Accra 100.5 FM’s 6:00 am news on Friday, April 22, 2022 said Adenta municipality, a lower-middle-class area in the Greater Accra Region has 18 primary schools as of last year but had 360 teachers while Zabzugu, a deprived area in the Northern Region has 260 primary schools with only 55 teachers.

He argued that there is an oversupply of teachers in the city centers while deprived areas suffer. Quoting from 2020 data, he noted that there are 200 empty primary schools in 75 deprived areas across the country. 

He described as a fallacy the assertion that the payment of the allowances has motivated teachers to accept postings to the rural areas. 

“If all of them are supposed to accept postings to the rural areas why is there overpopulation of teachers in the urban areas and extreme scarcity in the deprived areas of the country,” he quizzed.    

“The notion that the payment of the allowance has been a form of motivation for postings into the deprived areas is not backed by data,” he added.