Teachers failing students in Mathematics – Prof Anku

Professor Sitsofe Anku, the Director of the Meagasa Mathematics Academy, says teachers contribute to the increasing poor performance of students in the study of Mathematics across the country.

Prof Anku said most Mathematics teachers had failed the subject during examinations and decided to use teaching as the last resort to earn money, stressing that teaching was a profession, and needed professional training.The professor made the comments in Accra at a national training of trainers of Mathematics, which brought together some selected basic and Junior High School teachers across the country under the theme “Revamping Mathematics Education in Ghana Through Transformation”.

The training which began from April 27 to May 8, with support from the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service.

The trainers were taken through subjects such as breaking mental barrier in Mathematics, co-operative learning strategies, Mathematics modeling, Algebra, magic square and deductive reasoning on platonic solids.

Prof Anku said the training was necessitated because there had been a massive failure in Mathematics from basic to the tertiary and had become a national concern which needed holistic approach to address the menace.

“If teachers are knowledgeable in Mathematics, it makes it easy for students to comprehend and appreciate the subject thereby impacting positively on their performance,” he added.

He said the country’s curriculum was geared towards preparing for examinations and that their outfits prepared students to be analytical and tackle real life problem solutions.

“Teachers need to understand the principles and methods of mathematics to be able to teach students for easy apprehension and that the Academy has introduced software which help them to understand mathematics concepts”.

He encouraged all students to appreciate the study of Mathematics, since there was Mathematics in every profession, stressing that the Academy would soon launch a book christened “Mathematics Everywhere”, a career guide to motivate students to like mathematics.

Prof Anku said the Academy holds camps for students and workshops for teachers to nurture talents of students in mathematics, adding that students who have gone through the Academy have passed successfully.

“We had students who have failed in mathematics in the West African Senior Secondary School, but the Academy use only three weeks to teach them and had grade ‘A’ in Mathematics”.

Some of the teachers who spoke with the Ghana News Agency expressed satisfaction about the programme, stating that they have been transformed because the training involves more practical concepts.

They said the training had been beneficial in that they were allowed to explore to come out with their own concepts and derive formulas for them.