Ho (Volta Region) -- Professor Jophus Anamuah-Mensah, Principal of the University College of Education Winneba (UCEW), on Saturday advocated the licensing of teachers, after a year's post training probationary service, to strengthen their professional status and also boost qualitative teacher performance. He said the pre-requisites for licensing should be based on observations during teaching, staff meetings and co-curricular activities.
Prof. Anamuah-Mensah was speaking at the launch of the Golden Jubilee Celebration of the Jasikan Training College (JASICO), organised by the Old Students - Old Maroonians' Association (OMA) at Ho.
The Principal who is also Chairman of the Education Review Commission suggested that teachers be made to develop portfolios for assessment for promotion and the selection for awards. The portfolios he said, should depict the level of expertise of teachers and include innovative strategies used in teaching, activities with students, tests devised to help pupils to progress, photographs, charts, teaching aids and video clips of activities.
Prof. Anamuah-Mensah whose address was virtually a mini dissertation on the theme of the occasion "JASICCO - 50 years of quality teacher education" said teacher education should move away from "a single event" that takes place in training colleges, to a comprehensive model that embraces initial pre-service teacher education, in-service training to improve qualifications, recurrent in-service teachers orientation at cluster, zonal and district levels to improve skills and continuing professional self-learning.
"A professional teacher should remain a self-motivated and self directed learner throughout his or her life", he remarked. Professor Anamua-Mensah said the strengthening of the professional status of teachers would reduce the popular perception that anyone could be a teacher. He said mobilising non-teachers for the classrooms anytime there was teacher shortage did not help the professional status of teachers.
According to him "it is a stumbling block in attracting the best people into the profession" suggesting that rather than use untrained teachers, attractive packages should be provided to attract more qualified people and that some untrained teachers should be taken through intensive programmes for certificates as auxiliary professionals.
He called for partnership between training institutions and schools to avoid the "disconnection between the needs of schools and the preparation of teachers.
The launching ceremony, which was chaired by Mr Kwasi Owusu-Yeboa, Volta Regional Minister an old boy was characterised by rapturous conviviality by old students including Mr James Dogbe, Hohoe District Chief Executive (DCE), Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Nutakor of the Ghana Army, Mr Reuben Aggor, Director of
Distance Learning at the Ghana Education Service, Mr Senyo Dzamefe, a Judge and Miss Vida Donkoh, former Jasikan DCE.
The grand Gold Jubilee Anniversary of the college founded in 1952 by the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana, which is in November this year would be preceded by an OMA Congress in August.
Mr Gabriel Wotordzor, Principal, said the college which produced various categories of teachers over its 50 years span now had a numerical students population of 4,968 out of which 1,097 were females. He said from 1994 to date the school scored between 90 and 98 per cent at the external examinations. According to the anniversary would afford the college the opportunity to organise to rehabilitate its buildings and road network.
Mr John Nyoagbe, assistant General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers and National President of OMA said the association was not only for those who made it to higher institutions after JASICO. He said "everybody that passes through the school belongs to it by birth, what binds us is the fact that we received training at JASICO and came out of it as teachers.
Mr Samuel Gyang, Volta Regional Director of Education advised old student of the college to remain in constant touch with the school even after the jubilee. Mr Alfred Appiah, a children's rights activist and an old boy launched an appeal for 500 million cedis to build an assembly and administrative block complex to serve as a jubilee monument.
