The Ghana National Council of Private Schools (GNACOPS) has thrown its full weight behind the new curriculum being implemented by the Ghana Education Service and the Ministry of Education.
Human Resource Manager of GNACOPS, Mr. Kweku Entsie, explained that the review system and introduction of the Common Core Programme (CCP) Curriculum will not only help in the development of the nation but also help students choose right career and academic paths.
According to him, these innovations are necessary to aid in raising the quality of education at the pre-tertiary level with emphasis on science and mathematics as fundamental building blocks for success in either tertiary education or early entry into any working environment.
“As a developing country, we are competing with a developed world and so whichever means that we will take to get to that level is through education, and therefore, it has become necessary to review our system. Teaching and learning will become very easy for every child in the country, and with that, it has two focal paths; that is the academic pathway and the career pathway which teachers are being taken through…,” he said.
Speaking in an interview with UniversNews, Mr. Kweku Entsie revealed that GNACOPS has started training some selected teachers from private schools on how best to teach using the competency-based curriculum.
“We are doing cascading training and we’ve started with some regions. We’ve started the stimulation training at Somanya in the Eastern region, moved to Asamankese and then in Asante region, we’ve done twice. They did some in Greater Accra here, there will be another training in Adenta Municipality, Amasaman, Ga West and other areas, so progressively, we are on course.
“I can give you population of 2,510 teachers in the private schools who have been trained for now and we are continuing,” he said.
He all data gathered from the training programmes will be presented to the National Teaching Council (NTC) to enable them issue licenses to some of these trained teachers.
However, he highlighted some challenges private schools faced in the advent of the coronavirus.
He said:
“The council thought it wise to fall on certain donors to see if they can support the training even from the master training programs but as we knock on their doors, some of them are also expressing some challenges.
“We fell on the banks as well to support us train the private schools because private schools have not been on the operations for so many months now and so charging them to come train their teachers has been a challenge and so far this has been the councils challenge,” he recounted.
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Story by: Mabel Korkor Damilola | universnewsroom.com