“Take Them to the Farm”: Zabzugu’s Teacher Crisis Sparks Fresh Call for Urgent Action from Africa Education Watch

“Take Them to the Farm”: Zabzugu’s Teacher Crisis Sparks Fresh Call for Urgent Action from Africa Education Watch

As parents across Ghana prepare their children for school each morning, families in Nogmado in the Zabzugu District face a painful reality , some are being encouraged to send their children to the farm instead.

At Nogmado Primary School, one teacher has been left to handle the entire school population for nearly two years. Seven other schools in the district are reportedly battling similar shortages, raising fresh concerns about deepening educational inequality between rural and urban Ghana.

The situation has drawn sharp criticism from Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, who describes the crisis as a direct consequence of policy decisions rather than circumstance.

“WASSCE Failure Starts from Nogmado”

While policymakers in Accra debate rising school dropout figures and poor performance in the West African Examinations Council’s WASSCE, Mr. Asare argues that the roots of the problem lie in deprived communities like Nogmado.

“WASSCE failure starts from situations like Nogmado. The rest are symptoms,” he noted, pointing to the structural gaps that begin at the primary level.

Education advocates say children who spend their formative years in overcrowded classrooms — or worse, without adequate teachers — are far less likely to acquire foundational literacy and numeracy skills. The long-term impact is cumulative, widening disparities as students move through the system.

In Nogmado, data shared by the group suggests that statistically, only five out of ten pupils are likely to complete primary school, and at most two may progress to second-cycle education.

At the centre of the criticism is the alleged delay in releasing funds to recruit teachers for 2025 and 2026. Mr. Asare has called on the Minister of Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson, to urgently authorise recruitment to address what he describes as a worsening teacher deficit.

He argues that fiscal discipline must not come at the expense of classroom survival.

“The continued silence on this urgent matter is not a solution,” he stressed, urging immediate intervention to enable the Ghana Education Service to hire and deploy teachers equitably across underserved districts.

Education observers say Zabzugu’s situation reflects a broader rural-urban imbalance in teacher deployment. While urban schools often attract more staff due to infrastructure and living conditions, rural communities struggle with persistent vacancies.

Parents in Nogmado now face difficult choices ; keep children in under-resourced classrooms or redirect them to farm work to support household livelihoods. For many families already battling poverty, the opportunity cost of schooling becomes harder to justify when educational quality is compromised.

“This is not accidental,” Mr. Asare emphasized. “It is the deliberate product of policy decisions and indecisions.”

Though Zabzugu may not be the only district affected, advocates describe its situation as emblematic of deeper systemic neglect.

“A nation that starves its classrooms will feed its prisons,” Mr. Asare concluded, invoking a proverb to underscore the long-term social and economic risks of underinvesting in education.

For Nogmado’s children, the crisis is not abstract policy , it is a daily question of whether school offers opportunity or disappointment.

As Ghana continues to grapple with learning outcomes, equity gaps, and youth unemployment, the unfolding teacher shortage in rural districts like Zabzugu serves as a reminder that national development begins in the classroom  or falters without it.