Unpardonable errors in GES – Ghana appointment letter

Introduction

I came across the appointment letter of a non-teaching staff of Ghana Education Service (GES). The number of glaring errors and contradictions propelled me to write this post. I expect the headquarters of no less an institution than the GES to carefully scrutinise the documents they send out from their offices. Find below the appointment letter. Note that all sensitive information have been covered.

The offending appointment letter

I have grouped all the errors I have identified into two, thus: construction errors, which include grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors; and logical errors, i.e. contradictions.

Construction errors

1. Error in the reference: In the very first line of of the letter, we discover a glaring error. The reference statement reads: “In case of reply to the number and date of this letter should be quoted.” What is the “to” doing in that statement? It should rather read: “In case of reply, the number and date of this letter should be quoted.” It could be argued that this is a typographical error. However, this is a letterhead for a national department. One would expect the letterhead to be scrutinised by several people to ensure its accuracy before it is used. Typography is, therefore, not an excuse for such an error.
2. “non teaching” in the subject is also wrongly spelled. This is one word, and is either spelled as “non-teaching” or “nonteaching”.
3. In the last sentence of the fourth paragraph, “one year” should be a compound word written as “one-year” since the two words act as one idea, and qualify the noun “probation”. Therefore, the “(1)” should not even come between the “one ” and the “year”.

Logical errors or contradictions

This appointment letter is for a non-teaching staff, as indicated in the subject. However, there are references to things that are for teaching staff.

1. The beginning of the second paragraph reads: “The Head of the school shall assign you to a class and or subject to teach …” The very definition of non-teaching is “not doing, involving, or relating to the work of a teacher” as an adjective, according to https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/non-teaching (note that they use the “non-teaching” spelling). How then can a person appointed as a non-teaching staff be assigned a class or a subject? Seriously?
2. Paragraph 5 starts as follows, “You will be subject to the Conditions and the Scheme of Service and any circular and directive for the Teaching Staff of the Ghana Education Service …” Again, this is an appointment letter for a non-teaching staff, therefore, they cannot be bound by the conditions and scheme of service of teaching staff.

The verdict

With both the construction and logical errors, it is obvious that someone did not take their time to go over the document before publishing it. This is an act of carelessness on the person’s part. Besides, I expect that appointment letters should be in the form of templates, where only certain pieces of information are edited. The two logical errors identified in this letter should be part of the fixed part of the template, and should never be edited, so there’s no reason why a non-teaching staff should be told that they would be assigned a class or subject, by mistake, if the template was created and properly scrutinised.

If the headquarters of pre-tertiary education in Ghana can send out a document of such abysmal quality, it is no wonder Ghana education is struggling so much. An appointment letter from GES headquarters contains glaring errors and contradictions that you wouldn’t expect from such a high profile institution.

Conclusion

I am not, by this, saying that one cannot make mistakes in writing. For all you know, this post contains errors. However, with the number and kinds of errors in this single document, and coming from no less an institution than the headquarters of pre-tertiary education in Ghana, it is a worrying development. The message the headquarters of pre-tertiary education in the country is sending out to the public is that it is not important to write good English or send out accurate information. If this is the attitude of the workers at the headquarters, what do you expect of the teachers and the learners. You should expect disaster. This is not what we want for our beloved country.