University of Education introduces new programme for private school teachers
The University of Education, Winneba (UEW) has introduced a uniquely designed new academic programme to train private school teachers in a bid to upscale their qualification to professional degree holders.
The move, which is a collaboration between the UEW and the Ghana National Council for Private Schools (GNACOPS), is aimed at running purpose-made degree programmes for about 200,000 untrained private school teachers across the country.
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The new programme will involve the running of an intensive three-semester teacher education programme leading to the award of a diploma and a one-year top-up for the award of a degree, both to be run in the hybrid mode.
Also, the programme will benefit those who never did any programme at all and if qualified into the Colleges of Education, would have done four years, and also, those who have degrees but are not professionals to do a postgraduate diploma in education.
Meeting
The Vice-Chancellor of the UEW, Rev Fr Professor Anthony Afful-Broni, disclosed this during a meeting with a delegation from GNACOPS to finalise details of the agreement leading to the smooth take-off of the new programme.
The new programme is expected to start at the beginning of the 2021/2022 academic year which commences in September this year.
According to him, the initiative formed part of efforts to ensure that the Teacher Professionalism Policy under implementation by the Ministry of Education (MoE) through the National Teaching Council (NTC) was rigorously adhered to by all private schools.
“This timely intervention by the UEW and the GNACOPS is at the same time intended to protect the jobs of the teeming untrained private school teachers since they had acquired professional qualification,” he said.
Prof Afful-Broni underscored the importance the university attached to the new programme, which was amply evidenced in the worth of experience of professors from the university, who contributed immensely to the drafting and implementation of the new curriculum for the Colleges of Education.
Support MoE
He said “as the foremost teacher education institution, the UEW is ready to support the MoE to deliver quality education to empower the citizenry to make meaningful contributions towards the growth and development of the country”.
The VC added that once all teachers in the private school who hitherto were not professionally trained acquired professional qualification, it would enable them to go the extra mile to shape the destinies of their students.
No deviation
The team lead of the new programme, who doubles as the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies of the UEW, Prof George Kankam, in a remark, assured the leadership of GNACOPS and all relevant stakeholders that the programme was carefully crafted and would not deviate from the National Teacher Education Curriculum framework and the National Teaching Standards.
Delight
For his part, the National Executive Director of GNACOPS, Mr Enoch Kwasi Gyetuah, expressed the delight of the council members about the partnership with UEW and further congratulated the team members who developed the programme for putting together a solid programme to improve private school education.
“Indeed, this is a message of hope to all private school teachers as the new programme would spur them on to improve their competency level to remain relevant and contribute towards improving the country’s education sector,” he noted.