Govt must pay more attention to teacher motivation – Agyemang Badu

A former director of education, Mr. JR Agyeman Badu is urging government to invest more in teachers if it wants to achieve positive results in education.

The educationist said in commending government for putting in place some structures fundamentally by way of motivation to ensure teachers deliver what is expected of them, he opines a lot needs to be done to get even those fundamentals work properly.

Mr. JR Agyeman Badu was speaking to Shaibu Awudu on Might Morning Flight on the topic of teacher motivation which was informed by the theme for the 2014 celebration of the World Teachers' Day "Invest in the Teacher, Invest in the Future".

According to him, the nation in demanding the best of delivery from teachers, must pay attention to three key areas of teacher motivation which include paying teachers their due adequately and on time and making the environment for teacher upgrade enabling enough for teachers to take advantage of.

He bemoaned the centralization of the distance education which unqualified teachers could go through to prepare themselves for the profession.

He said the government must consider setting up enough centres for candidates who go through the distance education to write the exams close to their teaching centres so that movement and expenditure would be minimal.

"We need to have the distance learning examination centres closer to the teachers because the teacher is suffering and the GNAT and NAGRAT must take this up and discuss it with government so that more centres are created to offer some ease to the teacher", Mr. Agyeman Badu said.