Minister asks directors of education to be innovative

Professor Jane Naana Opoku Agyeman, Minister of Education, has urged Directors of Education to provide innovative ways to enhance the delivery of holistic, quality and affordable education for the country’s development.

She said as Managers and Directors they are knowledgeable and well positioned to use their expertise to ensure that quality education is paramount in the industry.

To this end, the Education Minister impressed on the Directors to work in collaboration with stakeholders, like traditional authorities, opinion leaders, the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies, communities, parent- teacher associations and the school management committees to identify hindrances promoting education and find lasting solution to them.

She was opening the one-week 22nd annual national Conference of Directors of Education (CODE) held at Fijai, in the Sekondi-Takoradi Metropolis of the Western Region.

It is being held on the theme: “Achieving and sustaining socio-economic transformation in Ghana for national development through holistic and affordable education: the role of stakeholders.”

She entreated the directors to monitor interventions like the Capitation Grant, the Integrated Approach to Literacy and help achieve the objectives for which they were created.

Touching on the language that should be used to teach children in the early stages, Naana Opoku Agyeman said “any method that produces abysmal results should be discarded, no child in any country with higher skills is being taught in a language other than the mother tongue. These children are bright but the strategies are wrong”.

She said the current experiment are meant to produce good results as they only succeed in stifling the children’s confidence and making them lose interest in school.

According to her, children should be taught in their first language or the language of the play ground or of the community for the first few years of education, adding that “it is only when the first language is solid that English will become so”.

While commending teachers for doing their best, the Minister equally advised against over stretching the pupils as they end up not achieving their purpose of learning.

She said she once visited a school early in the morning and found the children sleeping because they went to school early to do extra classes.

“In this way nothing positive had been achieved,” she said.

The Minister encouraged the directors to institute strict supervision over the teachers and circuit supervisors to enable teachers give off their best.

She said she expects that the directors would come out with innovative means of improving education.

Nana Kobina Nketsia, Omanhene of Essikado, who was the guest speaker admonished the directors to muster the courage to criticise and kick against measures that are likely to militate against the promotion of education and rather offer meaning and constructive solution for them.

He noted that they would be contributing to the setbacks in quality education if they keep quiet over issues that are not in the good interest of promoting quality education.

Mr Alfred Ekow Gyan, Deputy Regional Minister, advised the directors to critically examine the standards of teaching, learning and research in public and private schools and address emerging challenges as Ghana stands to benefit from their ideas and inputs they come out with.

He urged them to explore appropriate methodologies and to inculcate in teachers, and students with ideas that could sustain our human resource development efforts.

Mr Osei Kwadwo Hayford, National President of the CODE appealed to the Ministry of Education to encourage the universities to design programmes that would run during basic school vacation periods as the practice of teachers upgrading themselves during school sessions is not the best.

Mr Hayford appealed to the authorities to fulfill the promise of giving 20 per cent allowance to teachers in the deprived areas to encourage them.