Former President John Dramani Mahama, has explained in a throwback video interview surfacing online that teacher teacher trainees allowance was not terminated during his tenure of office as purported by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), stressing that it was rather substituted with the students’ loan Trust Fund.
According to Mr. Mahama in an interview with Metro TV’s Paul Adom Otchere, the allowance was substituted with the students’loan scheme because his government needed equability among all tertiary students.
The interview, has recently resurfaced the interment following comments made by the governing NPP that Mr. Mahama’s running mate Professor Jane Naana Opoku-Agyemang, who was then education minister, advised government to cancel all teacher trainees’ allowances and that her heartless decision clearly demonstrates that she has nothing better to offer the NDC and for that matter the generality of Ghanaians.
The former President mentioned in the interview that ”Teacher trainees allowances was not terminated, if you say it was terminated then you mean it just stopped arbitrarily but it was substituted for the students’ loan scheme,”
He added by saying ”What had happened was that we had upgraded the colleges of Education to Tertiary institutions and degree awarding institutions. Now the colleges of Education are not the only institutions awarding degrees to professional teachers, we have the University of Education- Winneba, we have the University of Cape Coast and even Legon is producing teachers.
”The students who are training to be professional teachers take loans like any other University students but the Colleges of Education were still taking the student teach trainee allowance and so for reasons of equity, because all of them are going to go back with the same certificate to go and teach in the same schools and these ones take students’ loan and these ones take teacher trainee allowance so that’s the first thing.
”The second thing is that with the substitution,we realised that with the substitution of teacher trainees allowances with students’ loan, we could increase the capacity of the Colleges of Education to take in more students so since we did that substitution, , enrollment in teacher training colleges have gone up 63.8%. It means that 63.8% of the students in colleges of Education would not have been there if we had continued to maintain the teacher trainee allowance.,” he continued.
Watch full video below;
Source: www.Ghgossip.com
