Teacher Education Division adopts programme to train non-professional teachers
The Teacher Education Division of the Ghana Education Service (GES) is working to train all untrained teachers in the classroom. Out of the 37,733 untrained teachers in the classroom, it has successfully trained 24,869, while plans are in place to train the remaining 12,864.
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Current enrolment
Currently, it has enrolled 870 made up of 306 males and 564 females in some selected colleges of education, and is collaborating with the Institute of Education of the University of Cape Coast to mount a programme to update the knowledge and pedagogical skills of untrained teachers at the Kindergarten (KG) level.
The programme dubbed, the Untrained Teachers’ Diploma In Early Childhood Education (UTDECE), seeks to gradually wipe out untrained teachers in the system.
The Director of Teacher Education, Dr Evelyn Owusu-Oduro, briefing the Daily Graphic, explained that 870 untrained teachers were enrolled from December 17, 2016 to January 7, 2017 for the first semester under a sandwich model.
She said the first cohort of the training programme took off in three centres namely, the Tumu College of Education, the SDA College of Education, Koforidua and the St Louis College of Education, Kumasi in addition to the one at the Institute of Education.
Dr Owusu-Oduro said the next batch to be enrolled would be in July, 2017 as a systematic step to train all those in the classroom with the requisite skills. The course, she added, would take four-years to complete.
Teacher Education mandate
Dr Owusu-Oduro explained that the training was part of the mandate of the Teacher Education Division to improve the competencies of teachers, especially those in the classroom.
She said the UTDECE programme was an intervention to mitigate the dearth of trained teachers at the KG level in our basic schools.
She said the programme, which was in the sandwich mode, was organised only when schools were on holidays.
“This is to ensure that teachers do not use school contact hours for the programme,” she explained.
She encouraged untrained teachers desirous to upgrade themselves to look out for details of the admission procedures in the dailies in February and March, 2017.
Background
The 2007 Education Reforms mainstreamed Early Childhood Education into the basic education system because of the realisation that the foundation for quality basic education hinged on quality early childhood education.
It was strongly recognised that the quest for quality early childhood education would not materialise without a qualified teaching force in terms of knowledge and pedagogy.
It is a reality that quality teaching and learning in the KG nationwide is hampered by the lack of trained and qualified teachers at that level.