Wa, Jan. 10, GNA- The recruitment of teachers under the National Youth in Employment Programme (NYEP) has tremendously improved the teacher situation in the Upper West Region, Mr. Cletus Paga, Regional Director of Education has said.
He said schools which, hitherto the programme had no single teacher could now boast of at least two teachers, while some of the schools could also now boast of a full complement of their teachers in the region. Mr. Paga who was speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Wa on the situation of teachers said although they were not trained teachers, their presence was timely and important to boost the morale of the children at school. "Some children are naturally born clever and with a little push they can come out to be the best in the country. Even not all trained teachers can bring out their best from the beginning of their career, and for now we need to be content with this programme".
He said with the introduction of capitation grant, enrolment in most of the basic schools shop up, and but for the timely recruitment of such teachers standards would have further gone done. The Regional Director appealed to the regular staff of various basic schools to exercise a little bit of patience for them since they were not professionals and therefore needed sometime to become accustomed to teaching.
"Try to accommodate them as they are because even teachers who undergo professional training take sometime to get used to the system, not to talk of people who have no professional training". Mr. Paga said his outfit would accord the NYEP teachers all the necessary support and also appealed to the government to fulfill its part of the contract by regularly paying their allowances in order to spur them on.
"If the NYEP continues to recruit teachers, we shall be able to realize our dreams of bringing education to the doorsteps of everybody in the country in the very near future".
