TEACHERS TRAINING MUST BE PROFESSIONALISED (PAGE 11, JUNE 11, 2010)

THE Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, has stressed the need for the training of young teachers at the 38 colleges of education to be geared towards making them true professionals.
He said this could eventually lead to the licensing of teachers on a renewable basis every four years, to help instill a sense of pride, dignity, discipline and quality.
“The good part of merit licensing of teachers is that it will ensure discipline and quality output on the part of teachers”, Mr Ofosu Ampofo stated.
In an address at the 2nd graduation ceremony of the Kyebi Presbyterian College of Education, Mr Ofosu Ampofo said achieving this concept would depend on the efficiency and effectiveness of the colleges of education.
One hundred and four-five students graduated at the ceremony which was on the theme “Transition to Tertiary Status: Prospects and Challenges”.
The regional minister said with the elevation of teacher training colleges to tertiary status , the lecturers were required to pursue higher education to enable them to attain higher qualifications that would enhance their output.
“To be a successful tertiary institution demands that the lecturers should be of high academic standing, hence the need for those who have not yet attained the requisite academic qualifications and research skills to upgrade themselves”, he stated.
Mr Ofosu Ampofo called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to facilitate efforts aimed at supporting the numerous unqualified teachers who were already in the classrooms to the level of diploma holders since that would virtually be the minimum qualification demanded of all professional teachers.
“The solution for this challenge will entail either organising vacation or sandwich classes for this category of teachers at all the colleges of education, or the GES should provide adequate motivation to them and encourage them to take advantage of the distance learning scheme,” he stated.
Mr Ofosu Ampofo further called for the creation of other non-academic administrative and support service departments such as security, transport, estates, parks and gardens, which would manage and co-ordinate the operations of colleges of education.
He, therefore, called on the current management and all prospective managers to seek further studies on management of higher educational institutions, which he described as a challenging area.
“Failure of practitioners to pursue higher education will lead to people with the requisite qualifications coming from outside their mainstream to take up leadership positions from them,” he stated.
On resourcing of colleges of education, Mr Ofosu Ampofo said since the education enterprise was quite expensive, the government would ensure that the necessary funds would be released to support all the 38 colleges of education to enable them offer quality training.
For his part, the principal of the college, Rev. E. Y. Omenako, advised the graduate teachers to work hard to reflect the quality training they received at the institute.