Heads of basic schools hold conference

The 2016 National Delegates Conference of Heads of Basic Schools (COHBS) opened in Accra last Thursday, with a call on head teachers to set new goals and harness all the opportunities available to meet the changing trends in education.

Deputy Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in charge of Management Services, Dr Stephen Adu, who made the call, said children of today had different attitudes from those of the 19th and 20th centuries, and to ensure quality education, there was the need to devise means of meeting the challenges posed by children of the 21st Century. 

High standards

The three-day conference, on the theme: “Achieving and Sustaining High Standards of Basic Education in Ghana: The Role of the Head teacher,” is being attended by members from all the regions of the country.

He said education had remained the single most powerful tool for the development of nations of the world and that was why the government committed 30 per cent of its annual budget to education in order to provide the manpower and logistics while the schools provided a conducive environment for learning.

Opportunities

Dr Adu advised the head teachers to explore all opportunities to support the children to give their best instead of criticising them all the time and at times calling them all sorts of names, stressing that conferences such as the ongoing one, provided a unique opportunity for members to meet and share ideas and strategise to improve basic education in the country.

He said the role of the head teacher was to be a leader and not a manager, with a vision to direct teachers towards that goal of improving standards of education, and to move schools forward.

The President of the COHBS, Mrs Naa Addoley Bulley Boye-Quaye, said head teachers of basic schools played critical roles towards the attainment of quality education in Ghana, pointing out that the theme for the conference resounded the charge that head teachers as managers of schools had accepted to keep.

Supervision

She said supervision was meant to keep watch over the teacher’s work and to ensure that the teacher put his or her best foot forward to ensure effective teaching and learning, to ensure that the required standard of education was achieved and maintained. She added that effective management of people, resources, finances and instructional time were the key administrative responsibilities of head teachers in the basic schools.

Mrs Boye-Quaye said there was the need for head teachers to ensure that classroom presentations were made activity-based for better output strategies to help weak children to improve on their learning abilities and added that  head teachers needed to help commit children to learning, since most parents failed in that responsibility.

The President said funding had been one of the major constraints for the smooth organisation of the association’s activities, while the national executives were scattered in different regions, thereby making holding of meetings by the association “not only difficult but very expensive”.