By
Francis Ameyibor, GNA
Koforidua, July 11, GNA – The Transforming Teacher
Education and Learning (T-TEL) team has intensified efforts to provide facelift
to Colleges of Education (CoE) through numerous capacity building activities in
preparation towards the roll-out of a new Bachelor of Education curriculum in
September 2018.
As part of multiple levels of support to
Colleges of Education, T-TEL launched the Challenge Fund to reward and promote
innovative practices in teaching, learning and management practices of CoEs.
Mrs Noshie Iddisah T-TEL Funds Component Key
Advisor told the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of the End of Project
Learning Event at Koforidua on Wednesday that through, the fund GHC2.5 million
was disbursed to 31 Colleges of Education across the country.
She said the fund managers had created the end
of project event as a common platform for sharing key lessons, showcasing
achievements and exploring opportunities for taking best practices and results
forward in their institutions and within the teacher education sector as a
whole.
Mrs Iddisah noted that the T-TEL project
sought to harness the energy and expertise of stakeholders across the teacher
education sector, with T-TEL incentivising innovation, inclusion, best practice
and results ensuring Ghana had high quality student teachers ready to teach and
inspire and young people to lead the country’s progress and prosperity.
She said T-TEL comes at a critical moment for
education in Ghana as the government and stakeholders were determined to
address poor learning outcomes and recognised that teaching was both a barrier
and a solution to progress.
She explained that the current education
policy environment provided a platform for improving the core and technical
skills of teachers, enabling the new policy framework for Pre-Tertiary Teacher
Professional Development and Management to be implemented.
“Colleges of Education are already doing great
work. They are ready to lead educational transformation in our nation. The
future is bright and the possibilities are exciting.
“As a Government of Ghana programme T-TEL is
providing continuous technical and funding support for the implementation of
the new bachelor of education curriculum for training teachers,” she said.
Under the initiatives, T-TEL has been working
with Universities to provide Continuous Professional Development support to
enable all lecturers and tutors to understand all aspects of the new curriculum
and deliver it effectively.
It has also focused on strengthening
partnerships between partner schools and Colleges of Education, guided by a new
School Partnerships Policy- to ensure that experienced teachers are effectively
mentoring student teacher.
It provides support to all Colleges of
Education to enable them to upgrade the qualifications of their tutors, within
a four year transitional period, to meet the minimum requirements of the
National Council for Tertiary Education (NCTE)
It also Supports Colleges to achieve their
organisational objectives and development plans through a Payment By Results
(PBR) approach, providing funding for Colleges of Education to use as they see
it fit to improve their infrastructure and learning environment.
T-TEL Ghana is a four-year Government of Ghana
Programme supported by the UK Department for International Development (DFID),
through an investment of £17 million.
T-TEL is supporting the country’s 46 public
Colleges of Education on their path to becoming tertiary “centres of
excellence” and producing high quality teaching graduates who can ensure our
children succeed at school.
Mr Daniel AlimoT-TEL Funds Officer also explained
that from October this year all new entrants to the teaching profession will be
required to study Bachelors of Education degrees offered by Colleges of
Education, initially in affiliation with the University of Cape Coast and after
one year of implementation with other public Universities.
He said the curriculum offered in these
Colleges of Education would represent a significant departure from previous
practices.
GNA