Encourage educational institutions to develop crisis response plan - Researcher

A Research Fellow of the Institute for Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA), University of Cape Coast (UCC), Dr Michael Boakye-Yiadom has encouraged various educational institutions in the country to develop a crisis response plan.

The plan, when developed, will serve as a guide in responding to future crisis that may disrupt activities of educational institutions, he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of a stakeholders forum organized by the Ghana National Association of Teachers on Wednesday, September 23, 2020, he added that it is important that time is taken to train the regional and district level heads on crisis response.

“How do we support the teacher to be able to respond? We can’t just say they should respond when we haven’t trained them in crisis response. So professional behaviour in the area for me is very important and decentralization of education is very key,” he said.

To him, crisis happens at unexpected times so strategic measures ought to be put in place to take care of them.

Dr Boakye Yiadom noted that “if you do not have a plan in the midst of a crisis you cannot think well, you are confused and if you do not have a plan it is worse” therefore there is a need to develop a crisis response plan in order not to be taken by surprise by another crisis on the educational sector.

He charged the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) to be at the forefront in seeing to the development and full implementation of a crisis response plan in various schools.

“I would want to go back to the schools may be led by GNAT or maybe GES that for every crisis, we can have many of such schools develop a crisis response plan…they may have about 50 different types of potential crisis and specific responses,” he stated.

The theme of the Stakeholders Forum was “Teacher Leadership in Developing Crisis Education Response.”