Programme for enhanced teacher education launched
An educational programme to equip student teachers with the requisite tools to deliver quality teaching and learning was launched by the Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, in Accra Wednesday.
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The four-year programme, known as Transforming Teacher Education and Learning (T-TEL), is funded by the United Kingdom Agency for International Development (UKAid) at a cost of £17 million as part of its Girls Participatory Approaches to Students Success (G-PASS) programme in Ghana.
Thirty-five thousand teachers are expected to benefit from the programme, which is scheduled to end in 2018.
The T-TEL is designed to support the future development of the 38 public colleges of education into becoming tertiary centres of excellence for producing high quality teaching graduates.
It is a collaboration among the Ministry of Education, the Ghana Education Service (GES), the National Teaching Council, the National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE), the National Accreditation Board (NAB), the National Inspectorate Board and the universities of Cape Coast and Winneba.
Recognition of teachers
Launching the programme, the Vice-President said the initiative was in recognition of the fact that quality teaching was fundamental for the nation to maintain its relevance and competitiveness.
He said teachers were critical to national development, explaining that good teachers made it possible for the youth to fulfil their potential.
“Therefore, for our country to prosper, teacher education must keep pace with the complexity and challenge of modern times,” he stated.
Mr Amissah-Arthur said the T-TEL sought to correct the long-standing weakness in the teaching of technical subjects.
Education Minister
Recognising the fact that the world had recorded an insufficient number of female teachers at the secondary and tertiary levels of education over the years, the Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, was upbeat that the intervention of the T-TEL would attract more female teachers into the country’s educational sector.
To drive innovation and social inclusion in schools under the programme, she said, the programme would create a challenge fund to support innovative ideas from the colleges, while a results fund would also be created to reward colleges that met their targets.
The National Programme Manager of the T-TEL, Mr Akwasi Addai-Boahene, said the approach of the programme was to collaborate and fill the gaps that existed in the country’s teacher education system.