PRESIDENT John Dramani Mahama has said that government would work with the teacher unions to undertake reforms across all levels of the educational ladder, to adequately prepare Ghanaian children for the future.

He noted that cheating in examination at the senior high school level, particularly over some years now was deliberate to “embellish” the performance of certain batches of graduates to make some people look good.

That approach, President Mahama emphasised, has been exposed by the poor results of the 2025 batch where nearly half of the 446,352 candidates who sat for the WASSCE failed the core subjects of mathematics, general science and social studies.

That notwithstanding, President Mahama said “strict invigilation” would not be compromised in subsequent examinations just to overstate the pass rate.

President Mahama made this commitment in Accra yesterday when he opened the Seventh Quadrennial and 54th National Delegates Conference of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT).

It was on the theme: ‘Education and Development: The GES @50: Reflecting, Reviewing, Revising and Growing the Profession and the Unions.’

Cheating in exams, President Mahama said, was corruption, and “it is sad to encourage our children to be corrupt at such an early stage in their lives. Ethical integrity is key to their future.”

As part of the measure to reform and improve teaching and learning in schools, he stated that government was expanding infrastructure at the secondary level to end the double track system to increase teacher-student contact hours.

According to him, 100 schools that were running the shift system have reverted to single shift with 30 category ‘C’ schools earmarked to be upgraded to category ‘B’ for enhanced teaching and learning.

Moreover, on basic education, President Mahama said procurement was underway for two million steel dual desks to permanently end “the pitiful sight of children sitting on stones or lying on their bellies to read or write.”

He said 200 classroom blocks each for kindergarten, primary and junior high schools were also to be constructed this year to enhance accessibility.

“I pledge that we’ll work with you the teacher associations to achieve these reforms,” he stated.

President of the GNAT, Rev. Isaac Owusu, on his part declared zero tolerance for assault on teachers.

Citing two examples where a teacher was allegedly shot and killed in-line of duty and another assaulted by students who were unhappy because he did not allow them to cheat during the WASSCE, Rev. Owusu noted that teachers would advise themselves if any case of assault is recorded henceforth.

“We are declaring a zero tolerance for teacher assault and brutality. Should any individual or group of people attack any teacher in Ghana, without any cause, we shall invoke the spirit and solidarity of ‘touch one touch all,” he declared to a rousing applause by the delegates.

“We can’t sit down for individuals to take the life of teachers for granted. If it happens, we’ll rally behind the victim and if we have to close down the school, we will,” he added.