Teachers urged to go beyond school syllabus

Koforidua, Jan. 27, GNA- Teachers have been urged to fashion out strategies for enhancing teaching and learning to suit the needs of their students.

The New Juaben Municipal Chief Executive, Nana Adjei Boateng, made the call at a stakeholder's forum at Koforidua aimed at improving educational standards on Wednesday.

He asked teachers to be innovative in their quest to impart knowledge to their students.

Nana Adjei Boateng welcomed the introduction of the school appraisal concept to ensure the periodic assessment of their performance and noted that despite the huge educational expenditure that formed the bulk of the country's development budget, "the result is not commensurate with the inputs."

Head teachers, members of the Municipal Education Oversight Committee (MEOC), Assembly members and teachers attended the forum. Nana Adjei Boateng asked the participants not to let the forum become one of the usual 'talk shops' but should ensure that it made meaningful contribution towards the delivery of quality education in the municipality.

The New Juaben Municipal Director of Education, Ms Felicia Duku, expressed concern about the drop of the municipality in the national ranking of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results from the 9th to the 11th position, adding, "this is very much worrying and needs immediate attention".

She urged the participants to pay serious attention to the various discussions and suggestions made at the forum in order to improve the level of teaching and learning skills.

The Eastern Regional Manager of the Anglican Educational Unit, Very Rev. Samuel G. Danquah, appealed to all the educational units to incorporate in-service training for teachers in their annual programmes in order to help enhance their output to improve the standard of education.

He asked teachers not to regard in-service training merely as away of acquiring certificates but to help them solve the immediate needs of the children.

Some of the participants expressed concern about the frequent changing of the syllabuses without correspondent availability of textbooks and appealed to the government to provide learning and teaching materials on time to avoid gaps in the system. They called for a mechanism, which would ensure the early replacement of teachers who proceeded on maternity or study leave or on transfer, noting that this would help solve the problem whereby vacancies were created for a very long time.