General News of Wednesday, 26 June 2019
Source: Myjoyonline.com
2019-06-26
Dr Prince Armah, Executive Secretary of National Council for Curriculum Assessment (NaCCA)
The National Council for Curriculum Assessment (NaCCA) says it has not mandated any individual or groups of individuals to train teachers for the implementation of the new education curriculum.
Executive Secretary of the Council, Dr Prince Armah says his outfit has a “clear roadmap for effective implementation of the reform” and has cautioned private schools to only deal with the leadership of their various associations for any training programme on the new reforms.
His caution follows reports suggesting some miscreants are taking money from private schools with the promise of training their teachers for the new education reforms.
“We developed this novel curriculum and we want to have a uniformed training programme for both private and public school teachers,” he said in an interview, adding any attempt by people to dilute and disrupt the training process will not be tolerated.
Dr Armah debunked assertions that NaCCA and its allied agencies are unnecessarily delaying in the training of private school teachers.
According to him, the plan is to train all teachers both public and private before the academic year begins in September.
Training Schedule
Providing details of the training programme so far, the NaCCA Executive Secretary said they started by training 36 public school teachers under a simulation exercise which helped in refining the whole programme to be used as a training guide.
This simulation group then helped in training a total of 186 teachers master trainers at a workshop.
The next phase is the regional training programme which will be done by the simulation group and the master trainers would have a good number of the teachers trained for the new curriculum.
He said by August, a total of 152,000 teachers will be trained from KG to primary on assessment and pedagogy, lesson planning and all other skill needed for effective implementation of the policy.
Private School Teachers
On steps taken to train the private school teachers, Dr Armah said, NaCCA has already met with the leaders of the private school associations and in July, the training for the master trainers will begin.
“Once that is done they will train their members at the District and regional levels,” he said.
He reiterated that with this new education reform, no child will be left behind and teachers will be equipped with the necessary logistics to implement the curriculum effectively.
“We have learnt from the lessons of previous reforms and how they have failed and we have meticulously attempted to address all of these.
“The resources to go with the curriculum are almost ready and will be distributed across the country in July, two clear months before September when the schools reopen,” he stated.
