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General news for Friday, October 2, 2020
Source: kingdomfmonline.com
2020-10-02
Director of GES, Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa
The Director General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Prof. Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, has said that it would be suicidal to reverse the professionalism of teachers by canceling the teacher’s licensing exam.
“If that happens, we will continue to keep our teachers below international standards. But we have to do everything we can to bring them up to par with their counterparts elsewhere, and that’s best practice everywhere, ”she said in an interview.
Professor Opoku-Amankwa spoke to the media yesterday during a visit to the Accra College of Education, which serves as one of the centers for Ghana’s teachers’ licensure examination, which began yesterday.
Bachelor’s exam
In all, 31,167 newly trained teachers are writing the two-day test in literacy, essential professional skills and numeracy.
The exam, which was scheduled for September 24 and 25, 2020, had to be rescheduled for October 1 and 2, 2020 due to the change in the academic calendar of the faculties of education as a result of the coronavirus disease (COVID- 19). pandemic.
Quality of education
Professor Opoku-Amankwa said that if Ghana was really serious about the quality of education, “then we should take very seriously the professionalism of teachers, of which licensing and continuing professional development are a part,” adding that the provision of necessary resources and other support to teachers was equally important.
“We cannot reverse the professionalism of the teachers and keep shouting about the quality of education,” he explained.
He explained that each professional body had a different way of evaluating its members, saying that while for some it was purely practical, for others it was a mixture of practice and theory, while for others it was completely theoretical.
Prof. Opoku-Amankwa argued that the licensing exam would promote professionalism, adding that licensing was the norm for any group calling itself a profession, with a code of ethics to regulate the activities of its members.
He cited doctors, lawyers, accountants, architects, nurses, among others, as professionals who licensed and regulated activities among themselves.
He noted that elsewhere teachers were licensed, noting that the best practice now was for teachers to be licensed, citing countries such as the UK and South Africa.
He recalled that the decision to grant licenses to teachers was announced by a former general director of the GES, Mr. Jacob Kor, in 2016, “so a lot of work has been invested and we have come this far.”
Furthermore, he said that licensing the teaching profession would put teachers on par with their counterparts in other parts of the world and expressed the hope that it would inject quality teachers into classrooms.
“We want to improve the quality of education; the country needs a certain quality of teachers in the classrooms, and since teachers are key to education, we have to find a way to ensure that only the best qualified are hired through the bachelor’s exam ”, he emphasized.
Support for
Professor Opoku-Amankwa further explained that it was part of the government’s program to maintain a standard, the reason for which was to provide 1,200 GHc for each teacher as a professional development grant as part of teacher improvement and professionalization.
He said that beyond regular license renewals, teachers would go through ongoing professional development courses to ensure quality was intact.
“We need to help them update. So this is part of the larger picture the government is engaging in to transform the education sector to ensure that the ‘Teacher First Agenda’ that has been established is ongoing, ”said the Director General of GES, who also is the General Overseer. of the licensure exam, he stressed.
He said that it was now mandatory that in order for one to enter the classroom to teach, the person could have completed national service, prompting patriotism, and also passed the licensing exam.
Flexibility
The director of the Accra College of Education, Dr. Samuel Awinkene Atintono, expressed his satisfaction with the selection of examination centers and said that it was flexible so that candidates could select centers closer to them.
He also spoke about the advantage of the license, explaining that it forced teachers to study continuously because they would be required to go to renew.
That, he said, would keep them on their toes and they would not go to sleep after obtaining the initial license.
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