GES promotion exam takes off smoothly

The revised promotion process for staff of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has taken off smoothly in all the 35 examination centres spread across the 16 regions of the country.

The first-ever aptitude test for staff promotion replaces the hitherto face-to-face interview sessions that were fraught with multiple challenges.

The Director-General of the GES, Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, had described the exercise as “a very equitable, fair and objective approach in ensuring that staff of the service go through stressless promotion”.

The director-general, before the start of the exam at the Accra College of Education, wished all the applicants well and encouraged them to do their best.

The Deputy Director-General (MS), Mr Anthony Boateng, who monitored the process at Hohoe in the Volta Region at the St Teresa’s College of Education and St Francis College of Education centres, was full of praise for the applicants as they conducted themselves well before, during and after the paper.

A total of 33,650 staff applied for promotion to various ranks in the service.

The first day was for applicants to the rank of assistant director II.

Today, February 21, is meant for applicants to the rank of principal superintendent, assistant director I and deputy director.

Other national officers of the GES, including the director of Human Resource, joined the regional and district officers to monitor all the centres across the country.

A statement by the Public Relations Unit of the GES said management was grateful to all persons who made the maiden examination a huge success, especially union leaders, staff, the Independent Examination Body and principals of the various colleges of education used for the examination.

Unions

Two teacher unions and some teachers have hailed the decision of the GES to revise its promotion process.

The National Association of Graduate Teachers, the Coalition of Concerned Teachers, Ghana and some teachers expressed their satisfaction with the decision to switch from interviewing teachers to the writing of aptitude tests as the method to grade them for promotion.

According to the unions and the teachers, aptitude tests were a more reliable way of grading teachers since the use of interviews could be slanted.

In separate interviews, they were all unanimous in the view that aptitude tests would eliminate all the biases associated with interviews.

Source: graphic.com