Ghana To Export Teachers To 3 Countries

Government has indicated that it’s taking steps to export Ghanaian professional teachers to three West African nations.

Minister of Education, Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, made this known on Tuesday in Accra during the Meet-The-Press Series organized by the Information Ministry.

The media interaction was intended to highlight measures being put in place by the Akufo-Addo administration to improve teacher quality in Ghana.

According to him, Ghanaian teachers are to be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.

He indicated that he would hold a meeting with the Guinean Ambassador to Ghana on Friday, November 23, 2018 to see how best some French teachers from Guinea would be imported while English teachers from the country would be exported to Guinea.

He stated that the move has become necessary because Ghana does not have enough qualified French teachers to support the development of French education domestically.

The exportation of Ghanaian teachers to Sierra Leone and Liberia, whose educational systems have been ravaged by several years of civil wars, is to promote quality education in both countries.

Reforms

Dr. Opoku-Prempeh said that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has undertaken reforms in partnership with development partners to enhance teacher quality in the country.

He stated that “the teacher reforms have been undertaken under the direction of the Ministry of Education with the following partners- National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE), National Accreditation Board (NAB), National Teaching Council (NTC), Ghana Education Service(GES), Committee of Vice Chancellors Ghana, Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, National Council for Curriculum and Assessment(NaCCA), Teacher Transformation Education and Learning (T-TEL) Project, Ghana Teacher Task Force (GTTF), Principals of Colleges of Education & Teacher Education Universities, Teacher Unions- GNAT, NAGRAT, CTAG, DFID, UNICEF, UNESCO, JICA and Norwegian Teacher Initiative (NTI).”

According to him, the reforms have helped improved practical teaching in schools.

He said the government has set up a National Teachers’ Standards (NTS) which would assess all student teachers.

The minister added that “the guideline sets out the minimum levels of practice that all trained teachers must reach by the end of their pre-service teacher education programme. The National Teaching Council (NTC), with support from T-Tel, provides the framework for future professional and career development for all teachers.”

He said that “five selected public universities have developed curricula aligned to the NTS and NTECF using the Curriculum Writing Guide. The institutional arrangement to deliver the four-year B. Ed this academic year will be managed by the University of Cape Coast.”

According to him, Colleges of Education have admitted trainee teachers to pursue a four-year B. Ed degree for the 2018/19 academic year, starting October 2018.

Merger

He reiterated that the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), National Film and Television Institute (NAFTI) and Ghana Institute of Languages (GIL) shall be merged into one university in the near future to award degrees.