6.2 Increased Internal Efficiency

The MUSTER studies lead to a number of observations about the internal efficiency of the present system of initial training. First a reminder of existing college costs and financial structure.

6.2.1 The Structure of Costs

Data from 12 colleges indicate that average college costs per trainee are about US$680 per student. There is a variation from about US$550 to as much as US$ 1,000 which, in this sample is unrelated to size. Typically colleges are small in terms of total enrolment (average 450 in this sample and 500 across all colleges) and have about one member of teaching staff to 15 to 20 students. This year college size and student teacher ratios may have been falling as stricter entrance conditions have been imposed.

Table 16: Trainees, Staff, Student Teacher ratios and Unit Costs for 12 Colleges

The structure of College financing is unusual in the sense that most of the costs lie in the value of trainees’ stipends. This can be illustrated with reference to budgetary data from a particular college for the current year (2000). In this case there are about 320 students, 30 teaching staff, and a total of 48 non-teaching staff.

Table 17: The allocation of a College Budget

This specific case confirms MUSTER data across the college sector. Typically across the college sector about 75% of direct costs are in student stipends, 20% in college salaries split between teaching and non-teaching staff about 60/40, and about 5% in non-salary expenses. College running costs are concealed in this budgetary allocation system. Trainees do not receive the entire value of the stipends since a proportion is held back and used by the colleges for operating costs. Our estimates indicate that about 40% is deducted from payments to trainees and allocated to purchases of food, equipment, learning materials etc.

The scope for cost saving is limited by the main parameters identified above. Increasing the student-staff ratio would reduce costs per student but ratios above 20:1 might be thought to be unsuited to conventional curriculum delivery. The only element of costs that might be reduced relates to students’ stipends. Judgements would have to be made whether that proportion which is withheld is efficiently allocated and whether the proportion of the stipend paid directly to students for living expenses (excluding what the colleges provide in the form of board and lodging) is appropriate. The latter amounts to about US$ 330 per year, out of a total unit cost of nearly US$700.

This unusual cost structuring has implications for ways in which efficiency gains might be constrained. A first order analysis of college costs indicates that as currently structured most costs are variable and rise directly with the numbers of students. This is because so much of the cost is in stipends. Increasing average college size from current levels which are small by international standards ought to reduce unit costs as fixed costs are spread over more students. This would not result in significant savings in this system since it is only perhaps 10% of the costs that could be regarded as fixed within different ranges of enrolment. It would be logical and managerially useful to separate budget running costs and student stipends, and separate fixed and variable costs. Currently there appears no incentive to increase the efficiency with which resources are used.

6.2.2 Curriculum and Assessment

We have already noted that the college teaching year is not as it seems in the sense that the actual number of weeks of teaching delivered in the colleges is well below the theoretical maximum (see Table 12). Although 33 weeks are available a year for teaching the real number of teaching weeks is much less. Out estimates suggest that normal teaching takes place for about 24 weeks in the first year, and 13 weeks in the second and third years (excluding a nominal 4 weeks of teaching practice a year). As much as one-third of teaching time is used for other activities, notably very substantial amounts of time in preparing for and taking assessment tasks.

The college tutors we have interviewed frequently referred to the constraints of time on what they could actually do. With looming examinations in mind, overcrowded syllabus, and extracurricular activities there was very little time, in their view, to engage in learning activities that required extensive exploratory or reflective work by students. This had the effect of compelling them to resort to lectures and note-taking. We frequently observed the interest shown by students in pamphlets that had been written by tutors for sale to students. These pamphlets were in actual fact lecture notes using past examination questions as examples and were very popular.

Fully 9 weeks out of 33 weeks are being used in years 2 and 3 of the existing curriculum for examination preparation and sitting. This does appear excessive. Increasing active learning time could improve the quality of learning and might lower failure rates. Failure rates of 20%, an average across the Colleges, increase unit costs per trained teacher by a similar amount and represent wastage, especially if failure is not retrieved by successful resitting.

6.2.3 Curriculum and Teaching Loads

The way in which teaching is organised has important implications for curriculum delivery. In the training colleges almost all the teaching is organised in a classroom and scheduled according to subject specific contact hours with tutors. This means that often a tutor’s teaching load is viewed strictly in terms of the fixed contact time with students. A common complaint from tutors is that their teaching load is excessive and that this makes it unrealistic to expect them to provide learning experiences of kinds that would potentially increase their teaching workload. It raises all sorts of questions for curriculum delivery in the colleges.

For example, if for reasons of providing rich professional learning for students, tutors are encouraged to provide a wider range of learning opportunities, what are the implications of this for their teaching loads? Are tutors currently heavily loaded and how should we conceptualise teaching loads? Is it possible, or indeed reasonable to reduce tutor-student contact hours and increase student group work vis-is projects, investigations, reflective assignments and individualised study, to take advantage of the possibilities these offer for improving learning to teach?

MUSTER has analysed tutors’ teaching loads in two colleges, to ascertain whether the much referred-to impact of teaching load on instructional practice reflects lack of management efficiency or is an organisational problem. The distribution of students on each of the programs in the two colleges used for this analysis are shown in Table 1

The overall staff-student ratio is as follows: College A - 1:15, College B - 1:21. Colleges A and B run slightly different programmes

Table 18: Number of Tutors and Student Distribution by Number in Each Programme for 1999/2000

* Number of tutors excludes Principals of the colleges

GTTP - General Teacher Training Programme, PTP - Primary Training Programme, SSP - Subject Specialist Programme

The Ghana Ministry of Education (MOE) policy on staff recruitment stipulates that staff-student ratio should be 1:15 and tutors should teach between 32 - 36 periods a week (a period = 40 minutes). Based upon this policy, College A has a high staff-student ratio of 1:21 and College B a ratio of 1:15 which satisfies the official requirement.

If one makes the assumption that a tutor teaches different student groups of 15 students for each period, the following results can be deduced. For a staff-student ratio of 1:15, a tutor has to be in a classroom with teaching contact with a minimum of 480 students (15 students per period x 32 periods) and a maximum of 540 students (15 students per period x 36 periods) a week. This actually results in an official teaching load in student-hour terms ranging from 320 per week to a maximum of 360 student-hours per week.⁹ What is the actual teaching load in the colleges and how do they compare with the official figures?

⁹ Student-hours appears to provide a better picture of workload. Each period of 40 minutes for a 32 or 36 period schedule works out to be a minimum of 21.3 contact hours and a maximum of 24 contact hours respectively. In student-hours terms this is between 320 – 360. (i.e. 21.3 x 15) Therefore the higher the value of student-hours the greater the work load because of the number of students to deal with and its implications for the organisational demands of student learning.

Using actual teaching loads the average teaching load in student-hours for WTC is 458. The estimated contact time with students is 12 hours, the average number of periods per week is 17 (ranging from 3 - 18). The average tutor is engaged in teaching 278 student periods each week. In College A the tutor-student ratio is 1:15 as recommended. Tutors have larger loads in terms of student periods than implied by the guidelines. However this is achieved by using group sizes which average 40. The consequence is that the average number of teaching hours a tutor actually teaches is only 12 per week for the weeks of normal operation. Our data illustrate a wide range of teaching loads across the tutors which arises from their specialisations, the elective choices that students make, and choices made about teaching group size. Most tutors teach both first and second year courses and therefore have to prepare material for both.

Figure 7 shows the staff teaching loads in terms of contact hours and student teaching hours delivered by the teaching staff (excluding the Principal and Vice-Principals) in the subjects offered in College A.

Figure 7: Teaching Load in student-hours by staff member - College A

Although 71% of tutors teach more than 360 student hours per week, they are actually in contact with student groups for 12 hours on average. Inefficiencies arise from uneven work loads across staff with different specialisations, whereby some are relatively heavily loaded and others have fewer periods with small groups.

In College B none of the tutors is able to meet the MOE minimum teaching load of 32 periods a week, partly because the college has a favourable staff-student ratio. Figure 2 shows the staff teaching loads in terms of contact hours and student teaching hours delivered by the teaching staff (excluding the Principal and Vice-Principals). The number of student periods a tutor works in a week ranges from 51 to 736. The average is 363 student teachers a week, a figure much higher than that of College A. Tutors teach on average 7 classes in a week and most work at two different levels. The average class size is 52. The average teaching load in student-hours a week is 614 which is considerably higher than College A and 97% exceed the notional Ministry guidelines. However tutors teach on average 12 hours a week, the same as in College A, because of the larger average group size.

Figure 8: Teaching Load in student-hours by staff member College B

E6 belongs to two different departments, E1 and M6 are Vice-Principals of the College

Recruitment of staff is done exclusively by the Principal of a College whose only guiding rule is to keep within the officially recommended staff-student ratio of 1:15. It is clear that the guideline is also sometimes ignored. It also leads to situations where some departments are understaffed and overburdened whilst others are overstaffed and under-utilised. For example, although College A has the full complement of staff (using the 1:15 ratio), the social studies department has only two tutors teaching a total of 70 periods a week, whereas the science department has five tutors teaching a total of 48 periods a week. The physical Education department has three tutors sharing a total of 27 periods a week. It would appear from the analysis of teaching load in the two colleges that the problems emanate from both organisational structure and curriculum demand.

Issues about staff-tutor ratio and tutors workload are complex and their resolution may not be simple as they raise a lot of challenges that touch on policy, politics and practice. Nevertheless, any serious attempt to improve curriculum delivery to yield positive professional learning outcomes will need to face the challenges it presents. Certainly more research into this is required, particularly analysing data from all the 38 teachers’ training colleges in Ghana to see the patterns that emerge, which colleges are managing better and why.

The data we have do indicate that there may be some scope for more efficient utilisation of staff. Average class contact times of 12 hours per week (2 hours per day) do not seem excessive especially when coupled with the large amounts of time allocated to assessment tasks. Group sizes could be smaller with larger numbers of contact hours, if it was thought this would improve the quality of learning. More fundamentally the problem of efficient utilisation of staff revolves around the relatively small size of Colleges, the number of subjects in the curriculum and the willingness and ability of tutors to teach two or more subject areas. A review of policy in these areas might produce opportunities to expand enrolment and maintain student contact and deepen learning experience with modest increases in staff-student contact time. Currently Colleges do not appear to have an obvious incentive to manage staff time more efficiently. Teaching group sizes are not monitored and more rather than less effective deployment brings no clear benefits to the College.