Mr.
Chairman, District Director of Education, Nananom, District Coordinating
Director, The Assemblyman from Elubo Electoral Area, Salakyi Zongo King and his
chiefs, Chief Imam, Distinguished Guests, all protocol duly observed, Ladies
and Gentlemen. I would like to cease this wonderful opportunity to thank all
dignitaries and delegates herein present.
We unanimously
opted for the theme “The Quest to Develop Ghana: The Need to Prioritize Quality
Teacher Education”, in the sense that as a nation we know that teachers are
central to development and teaching should be a highly valued profession.
Teacher education is one priority that the incumbent government should focus
on. Teachers must have good pedagogic content knowledge in the subject they
teach, well equipped with the use of varied teaching techniques using
appropriate teaching and learning materials. These are the fundamentals of
standard setting in any profession but these must be situated within the
realities we face and the programmes within our national system.
Recently,
the current level three hundred students are in a horrible situation due to the
unstructured five semester policy implemented to serve as a central piloting
instrument to provide a recommended research results to be constituted, this in
very short term failed and students in question are completely at sea. Ever
since the five semester issue failed students are compounded with hard times,
sometimes students are not even aware of courses to be read in a semester.
There was an initial arrangement that student teachers would have to teach for
three days (Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays) in a week and two days (Thursdays
and Fridays) for cluster tutorials but to our dismay the authorities are now
imposing on us that we should teach for the whole week without any cluster
tutorials this semester. Students are not satisfied with the fact that last
semester we offered two courses (Assessment and Research) with two days cluster
tutorials whilst we are offering three most challenging courses this semester
(Statistics and Probability, Guidance and Counselling and English Language) of
which we are being denied cluster tutorials. The world is unfair.
Despite
government’s investment in education, there are still differences in the
quality of education learners get. Still majority of colleges in Ghana here are
not having a well-furnished library, laboratories and I.C.T rooms with workable
computers aid teaching and learning. Constant shift of curriculum and policies
in the colleges of Education has made things very tough for current level three
hundreds.
Aristotle
once said “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education”.
Education over the years in Ghana has been distorted to take some misshapen
qualities that in turn affect the positive impact intended, due to the
consistent change of government, governance and policies. In a situation where
a nation wants to develop its statutory functions, it is always possible to
link both bookish and technical knowhow to ensure effective deployment of efficiency
to aid a remarkable development.
Today in
Ghana, it is believed that, the educational standard is a comedy ground for
politicians. Every new government familiarizes itself through the sneaking
pores of the Education sector. We beseech this incumbent government to pay the
feeding grant as soon as possible because Teacher Trainees’ have suffered in
the hands of the immediate past government and we do not want such to happen
this time round.
We commend
the government for restoring the allowance as promised in their campaign
message. As it stands now trainees do not know the amount to be given and due
to that we appeal to the government to unequivocally come out and make it clear
with the specified amount without any hesitation before September.
Mr.
Chairman, We once again commend the government for accepting it to pay the
feeding grant arrears owed by the immediate past government which was made
known to us during the meeting between the Chief of Staff and the Minister of
Education. The minister categorically mentioned that the current level two
hundreds, three hundreds and the newly trained teachers are the beneficiaries.
We therefore appeal to the government to add more grease to her elbow since the
money is delaying.
The payment
of utility bill has always been a problem to teacher trainees in Ghana. We do
not want to have any problem with the government hence should take the
responsibility upon themselves as stated in their manifesto page 32 item (y).
Finally, Mr.
Chairman all protocol duly observed it will all the time be appropriate for our
policy makers to be so tactical to come down to the grassroots’ to have
effective and dependable research for progressing than to have a shallow
research for retrogressing. It is about time our policy makers focus more on
our institutions to ensure supparasitation of conditions for teaching and
learning. Government nowadays should consider how much is too much, how far is
too far to help build some stability in the Education sector.
LONG
LIVE GHANA!!!LONG LIVE TTAG NATIONAL!!!
LONG LIVE TTAG WEC SECTOR!!!!
Thank
you.
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