Pupils/students not benefitting from teachers' professional upgrading-

Vivian Etroo

Cape Coast, June 13, GNA - The Cape Coast Metro Director of Education, Ms. Vivian Etroo, had said that, despite the growing number of teachers pursuing degree courses to upgrade themselves, the performance of pupils and students had not improved significantly.

According to her, the numeracy and literacy capacity of pupils keep declining, as children lacked the basic knowledge of adding and subtraction, as well as the ability to read and write simple sentences, leading to poor performances at the Basic education certificate examinations.

Ms. Etroo expressed these sentiments when she closed a four-day in-service training workshop for 79 teachers, drawn from 13 districts in the Central Region.

The training is to sharpen the skills of the teachers, to enable them to deliver well, especially in the areas of science, mathematics, English and ICT.

The training course, organized by the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), in collaboration with the Canadian Teachers' Federation (CTF), would also sharpen and upgrade the skills of basic school teachers in the Region to keep them abreast with current methods of teaching.

She said educational standards had gone down because the children are not getting the required basics in numeracy and literacy to make them perform better, due to the undesirable attitude of some teachers, who lazy about and care less about the welfare of the children they teach.

Ms. Etroo deplored the rampant cases of casual leave and excuse duties by many teachers and stressed that it was negatively impacting on the contact hours teachers should have with their pupils and students.

She said these excuses affect the performance of pupils, adding that, a lot of teachers were pursuing the regular stream at the universities without permission, leaving the pupils in the classroom.

She appealed to the GNAT to collaborate with the Ghana Education Service (GES) to find a lasting solution to the problem and raise the standards of education in the country.

On the capitation grant, she asked school heads to plan and use it judiciously and not to misappropriate it.

The workshop coordinator, Mr John Nyoagbe, who is also the Deputy General Secretary of GNAT, said the Association was one of the best teacher organizations in the sub region.

She said because of the prestige of the GNAT, it is able to attract international organizations for sponsorship and urged teachers to avail themselves of the numerous opportunities to keep them abreast with modern trends in teaching.

He said GNAT had trained 100 resource persons in six subjects to serve as trainers for its members nationwide and urged beneficiary members to put what they had acquired into practice, because the organization was very much interested in their professional development.

Mr Burris Devanney, representative of CTF, said his outfit was not only interested in enhancing the professional development of teachers but also to carry out community development, to sensitize deprived communities on the need to educate their children and also to undertake self help projects through mobilization.

This he said was to ensure an improvement in school infrastructure at the community level, to enable them to access quality education.

The course Director of the workshop, Mr Ernest Asamoah said GNAT was evolving strategies to demystify the teaching and learning of science in schools to attract more students to the subject because of the booming of science and technology related careers.

Mr Thamas Berfi, the Regional Secretary of GNAT, encouraged teachers to be more committed to their work and endeavour to ensure the better performance of their students, adding that, the Association would continue to seek their welfare.