4.2 Who becomes a teacher: profile of background characteristics

From the four training colleges studied it was possible to construct a profile of the background characteristics of those who become primary and junior secondary school teachers in Ghana. Table 4.1 enables us to draw some conclusions about this background.

Those who choose teaching enter at a relatively young age, and if they remain in teaching, will have a career life span of about 36 years. Not many NQTs - about 40% enter teacher training straight after secondary education. The reasons are not easy to detect from our data. A tentative explanation could be that many do not qualify after completing secondary education and have to re-sit some exam subjects to meet academic entry requirements. In fact, the table shows that the majority barely meet the qualifying grades in English and Mathematics and that the standards are falling. Less than 30% who qualify possess grades in the top pass category of A, B or C in English. In Mathematics, the situation is slightly better.

It is not surprising that most student teachers and newly qualified teachers are from the "Akan" tribe. All four colleges sampled for the study were located in southern Ghana, which is predominantly Akan.

In general, between 70 - 80 % of the samples had no formal experience of teaching in a primary or junior secondary school before entering training college. Most prospective teachers (over 60%) had their early formal schooling experience in urban areas.

Table 4.1: Background characteristics of student teachers and beginning teachers

¹⁸ Based upon 78% student teachers who were products of the new educational system and therefore had SSCE qualification grades. Grades D & E and grade 6 are lower ends of the pass grade and represented the weakest in pass grades. The grades for NQTS include 'O' grades 5 & 6.

¹⁹ Jobs classified under self-employed are relatively low-paying entrepreneurial jobs – predominantly farming and trading

The selected background characteristics of parents suggest a sizeable proportion to be in primary sector employment. Most parents of teachers are either self-employed (especially mothers) or are teachers themselves. It is possible that those whose parents are teachers may come with first-hand insights into the socio-economic implications of their decision to become a teacher, which will impact on their values, attitudes and commitment to teaching. If that image is a poor one, it is more likely to affect trainees' and beginning teachers' long-term commitment to teaching.

The background characteristics of the student teachers have implications for policies on the starting points and structure of training, particularly in view of the weak academic backgrounds of the majority. This creates additional burdens for teacher training colleges as they seek to improve the academic knowledge background of trainees to enhance their confidence in teaching. If the teaching profession is not attracting the best students in terms of academic achievement, it may have to offer remedial tuition to strengthen prospective teachers' subject knowledge mastery. Since some teachers are expected to teach at JSS where greater demands will be made of subject knowledge mastery, this issue is clearly very important. A weak subject knowledge background could also make it difficult to acquire a deep conceptual understanding of subject pedagogy. It would appear that the new teacher training programme, in which the first year is completely devoted to remedial work in academic subject knowledge, could address this problem (see chapter 3).