Teaching Profession to be made lucrative

Navrongo, June 4, GNA - Mr. Mark Woyongo, the Upper East Regional Minister, has said the government is committed to making the teaching profession very lucrative to attract professionals in other fields and students into the field.

He said teachers' condition of service would be improved through the payment of competitive salaries, provision of decent accommodation, enhanced retirement benefits and payments of hardship allowance to teachers in deprived areas.

Mr. Woyongo said this during the matriculation of Diploma in Basic Education students of the St. John Bosco College of Education in Navrongo.

He said the teacher is central to every educational reform and teacher education and satisfaction should be of outmost concern to policy makers, education providers and all stakeholders in education. Mr. Woyongo said the government was committed to reviewing the GETFund act to decentralize the operation of the GETFUND board and broaden the involvement of local institutions in prioritizing the use of the fund.

The fund would cover critical areas such as research, academic and residential facilities, scholarship and bursary awards for needy students in national priority areas among others to raise the standards of education in consonance with the current global challenges. Mr Alfred Abugre Ndago, the Principal of the college, said the vision of the school was to produce high quality teachers who would improve the standard of education in the country. He said 280 teacher trainees were carefully selected from an initial number of 1,200 applicants and urged the students to take their studies seriously.