JHS teachers upgrade skills
The Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has held a five-day training programme for 120 junior high school (JHS) teachers and circuit supervisors drawn from the Kpando Municipality and the North Dayi District in the Volta Region.
Advertisement
The workshop, held at the Kpando Technical Institute, was aimed at upgrading the skills of Mathematics and Science teachers at the JHS level to ensure improved performance.
The Course Co-ordinator, Mr Matthew Adjardjah, who is also the Head of the Professional Development Department of GNAT, called on all stakeholders in pre-tertiary institutions to pay more attention to the on-the-job training of teachers to improve their pedagogical skills.
He said it was not enough to build imposing classrooms without a corresponding quality teaching.
He intimated that 21st century schools required teaching methods to produce the critical thinkers that the nation required.
Failure rates
Mr Adjardjah bemoaned the failure rates in Integrated Science and Core Mathematics at both the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) levels, and called for pragmatic measures to be taken to reverse it.
He said GNAT had designed the training workshop to avert the situation, adding that teachers had a responsibility of not just acquiring degrees but also applying the right teaching methods in their classrooms.
The President of GNAT, Mr Alexander Buadi, urged the participants to attach the necessary seriousness to the workshop to justify the investment made by GNAT.
The Kpando Municipal Director of Education, Mr John Teku, said he was grateful to GNAT for the workshop and urged the participants to put into practice whatever they had learnt from the programme.