Programme to upgrade teachers begins

Page 11
August 14, 2009

THREE thousand Certificate 'A' teachers in the country are undertaking a two-year Sandwich programme to upgrade themselves to diploma status.
The upgrading is part of efforts by the Ghana Education Service (GES) to upgrade the about 49,000 Certificate 'A' teachers to diploma status.
The Head of the Teacher Education Division of the GES, Mr Victor Mantey, who made this known to the Daily Graphic, said the teachers were the second batch of Certificate 'A' teachers to take part in the programme.
He said the upgrading programme, which was expected to end on September 13, was being held at the Tamale, St Louis, Bechem, St Jospeh, St Francis, Ola and the Presbyterian Colleges of Education.
He said the first batch of 11,000 teachers who started the programme two years ago had completed, and that the GES was expecting the same number of teachers to register.
Mr Mantey said other competing programmes might have led to the drop in the number of teachers that registered for the programme.
On the issue of teacher trainees who would be entering colleges of education this year, he said 9,000 students had been admitted for the 2009-2010 academic year.
He said the 9,000 figure had to be maintained because of the financial implications in terms of payment of allowances in increasing the number.
Mr Mantey said an exercise carried out by the Teacher Education Division of the Ghana Education Service (GES) has revealed that there were 6,000 untrained teachers in 70 of the 170 districts of the country.
The exercise was carried out to know whether there were still untrained teachers in the system following the introduction of the Untrained Teacher Training in Basic Education (UTTBE) programme in 2004.
The UTTBE programme was introduced when it was identified during a census that there were 24,000 untrained teachers in the system.
The programme was to train those who were untrained thereby leading to the award of diploma after their four-year training period.