4.2 The posting system

Once the form has been filled out, this information is then processed centrally and teachers are posted to regions; the regional postings officer then has the responsibility to assign them to specific schools. The following are taken from the 1997 guidelines for posting newly trained teachers:

60% of trained teachers should be posted to primary schools and 40% should fill vacancies in JSS. There would be no replacement of pupil teachers [underlined] [...] Regional Directors are advised to take special note of Districts within their regions where there are acute shortage of teachers when doing the District allocation [...] Due to complaints from teachers, Regional Directors are advised to impress upon their District Directors the need to assist the newly-trained teachers to find accommodation in their new communities [...] Due consideration should be given to teachers with health problems [...] These teachers should be posted nearer to places where there are hospitals or clinics [...] Female teachers should be sent to urban areas and male teachers who did not choose the region should be posted to towns as incentives to let them stay and work. [National Postings guidelines 1998, Manpower, GES]

Implied in these guidelines are a number of problems faced by newly trained teachers when they are posted that will be discussed shortly, but it is worth noting that the rational operation of the system is seriously undermined by a number of key factors. Firstly, due to poor record keeping and internal communication within GES, some teachers attempt to change the region they have been posted to by underhand means:

This year we had a little problem. Some of the cards for posting went missing and people exploited the gap. People take advantage and do other things. Some teachers claimed that they hadn't had a posting (even though they had) because they didn't like where they had been sent. Over the years it's a few, but this year it's been very bad. Some went to Accra and brought photocopied cards, I intercepted some of them and forced them to return to their former districts. [Regional Postings Officer]

Similarly, when teachers are posted to schools and they discover they are in rural areas, a significant minority try to get an immediate transfer. The following quotations illustrate the breakdown in organisational culture from a number of perspectives and they are instructive when considered side by side. The first is a view from the head of Manpower in GES, and while acknowledging the problem, it suggests it is open to a rational solution:

Avoid allocating teachers to districts, which clearly do not require any more especially when nationally we have a shortfall in our trained teacher requirement. Let us try to be very fair and firm. We know it is not going to be easy since people are going to kick against posting to the very places where their services are needed. The past year was terrible especially for Western Region and the regions in the northern sector of the country and to some extent Central region. [Presentation given by Louisa Owusu to GES Postings Officers at GESDI, Ajumako, 11/4/99; my italics]

In this quotation there is the rhetoric of enforcement alongside an implicit acknowledgement of organisational breakdown in the phrases I have put in italics. In the second quotation, the Ghanaian consultant, James Nti, who was cited earlier, notes that the system is widely perceived to be open to abuse:

[The problems in GES are] borne out by the imbalance in the distribution of trained teachers. A case in point is the superfluity of trained teachers in urban areas in contrast to inadequacy in rural schools. This situation is created and encouraged by the fact that teachers posted to deprived areas use their godfathers and godmothers to have reposting or leave unceremoniously to take up appointments with private schools...Steps being taken to rationalise the distribution of teachers need to be encouraged. (Nti, 1996, p. 18)

This view finds an echo among many head teachers:

Those who stay for longer periods in the rural areas are the older teachers. The new teachers are sent to an area for one year. They will say because of the village environment their health is suffering so they will go to the hospital and get a medical form to be transferred to the urban centres. I remember about four years ago, they did the postings in Accra. Somebody was sent from Accra to A. [a rural village]. They say the father was a big name in Accra so they packed all the belongings, they come down and when they saw the place, they didn't even step down from the car...they said "Is there light?" "No" "Is there piped water?" "No", and then they drove away. It's a true story. The head of that school told me. [Head teacher in an urban primary school]

The next two quotations from teachers who worked at the same remote school for one year reveal the depth of the problems caused by bureaucracies perceived to be open to influence and not to act in a fair way. The first quotation is from a teacher who managed to arrange a transfer after one year even though the minimum time that teachers are supposed to stay in post is three years:

I also got a transfer [after one year from a remote school] because I wanted further education and being there I was cut off from this so I wanted to be by the roadside and have access. I was sick as well, I was seriously sick. There were problems with the water supply and I had to make appeals to my landlord. We were taking drinking water from the rocks as the bore-hole was spoiled. [Were bribes involved?] I wrote a letter that was forwarded to the office and I told my uncle and he went to the office and the transactions that went on I cannot tell. [Male teacher who transferred from a rural primary to an urban JSS after one year]

In contrast, one of his fellow teachers is left at the school and his perception of unfair treatment at the hands of the education systems seems to have caused great resentment and undermined his commitment to the job:

I wanted to transfer because of problems of being sick, having to walk, but they refused to give it to me because there aren't many teachers here, but others have pushed through by giving them money and other things and they just allow them to leave. [Assistant Head teacher at a rural primary school]

GES says women teachers are not to be posted to rural areas. In practice some are, leading those who are to see themselves as having been treated unfairly and seek early transfers. Yet, women make up a significant percentage of the graduates from training. This highlights a conflict between an emphasis on the education of girls in rural areas in education policy, very real problems facing women posted to rural areas, and what rural schools need and what training colleges produce. Many in the education system perceive a need for more female role models in rural areas, and many male teachers in this study said they resented the practice of posting women to urban or semi urban areas. Women teachers who accept postings to rural schools rarely seem to stay long and, according to district officers, often refuse the posting in the first place. Thus, the practice recognises a Ghanaian reality (fears of parents that their daughters may lose their marriage market or be put in vulnerable positions) which is apparently not acknowledged in recruitment for training colleges.

The picture that emerges from the perceptions of teachers interviewed for this study is of a bureaucratic system that does not operate fairly, benefiting some who have influence (and some facing genuine hardship) while creating resentment among those who actually accept their posting and stay at it. Thus, a culture of manipulation exists alongside a culture of resentment and it is hardly surprising that there is ambivalence towards GES among teachers and heads despite the fact that it is staffed by ex-teachers. In fact, it would not be overstating the case to say that among some teachers it faces a serious crisis of legitimacy, epitomised by the strike over delayed allowances and salaries, which took place in 2000. This becomes even clearer if one considers two other aspects of bureaucratic socialisation, which have a huge impact on newly trained teachers' lives and their attitudes to teaching as a career. The first is the lack of enforcement of the bond (hinted at already), which is supposed to ensure teachers, who have received three years bed and board during training, spend three years service in the school they are posted to. The second is the late payment of salaries.