Tamale, Feb. 28, GNA - Mr Mike Nsowah, Acting Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, has stated that the inadequate number of trained teachers in basic school had remained a worry to the Ministry of Education and Sport and the Ghana Education Service (GES). He said the recruitment of untrained teachers had therefore become necessary to enable the Ministry and the GES to overcome this challenge. Mr Nsowah said this in a speech read on his behalf at a five-day workshop for "District Support Cadres" for the "Untrained-Teacher-Training Diploma in Basic Education Programme (UTTDBE)" in Tamale on Monday.
The UTTDBE Programme is a distance learning in-service programme aimed to improve the quality of education at the basic school level. The 140 district education office personnel, circuit supervisors, training officers and teacher training college tutors, who form the "District Support Cadres" were drawn from the 13 districts in the Northern Region and the Affram Plains in the Eastern Region. The programme would provide the participants with the requisite skills to offer professional support to trainees on the job as well as organize induction courses for school mentors at their respective districts.
Mr Nsowah said the good thing his outfit had noticed about the untrained teachers was that they readily accept postings to remote and deprived communities to teach in schools in those areas. He however expressed the regret that since the introduction of the "Education Reforms" a large number of them had not been given in-service training to equip them with the necessary skills to enhance their work. He said it was for this reason that the government had prioritised the training of untrained teachers to reduce poverty and to achieve the "Millennium Development Goal of Education for All".
The Director-General appealed to the district support cadres of the UTTDBE to coordinate the activities of untrained-teacher-trainees, who had enrolled for the programme and inform the district directors on any misconduct by them.
