The New Juaben South Municipal Education Directorate, in collaboration with the Institute of Professional Educators and Instructors – Ghana( IPEIG), has organized a one-day capacity-building workshop aimed at strengthening headteachers’ ability to supervise effective curriculum implementation.
The workshop was targeted to equip all 52 Heads of Basic Schools in the municipality with in-depth knowledge of the new standard-based curriculum to supervise effectively curriculum interpretation, lesson design, as well as classroom and examination assessment in their respective schools.
According to the New Juaben South Municipal Director of Education, Mustapha Haruna Appiah, the training forms part of new measures to address some identified challenges teachers and heads of Basic Schools are confronted with in the classrooms as a result of the newly introduced standard-based curriculum.
The Director noted by saying “the idea of the workshop is that in going round to the schools they realized that most of the teachers do not know how to prepare the new lesson plan so they only just download them from the internet and even that they don’t comprehend what they have downloaded and as a result, they taught the schoolchildren different things altogether, a situation, he described as a pathetic.
“One of my core mandate is to organise a fresh courses, in-service training and we started with the Headteachers and the Coordinators to enable them to understand what we are doing so that in their vetting they will know how to vet well and impact it to their teachers to help them prepare better lesson notes for the pupils without depending on internet for assistance,” he added.
Mr. Appiah further highlighted that in assessing factors accounting for students’ poor performance in the outcome of the recent Basic Education Certificate Examination BECE, teachers and headteachers’ ability to fully implement the standard-based curriculum in their various schools stood out as one of the major factors hence the need to immediately address such existing gaps with training and workshops for heads and teachers.
The training was facilitated by a team led by the Executive Director of the Institute of Professional Educators and Instructors- Ghana, Dr. Godfred Marvin Owusu.
In his sessional address, he emphasised the need to bridge the gaps and lapses that the introduction of the new standard-based curriculum has brought on both instructors and learners during instructional sessions.
According to Dr. Godfred Marvin Owusu Boateng, such gaps are impacting negatively on learning output since the new standard-based curriculum was crafted beyond the resources available for the teacher at the centre of instruction, thereby limiting some teachers and heads to supervise effective curriculum implementation in their various schools.
He said “the teachers must be able to use the curriculum, be intentional and plan their lesson, and execute the same in the classroom , this will let the learners improve upon the previous two examinations they have written in the past two years”
“We’ve also realized that the teachers are not using the curriculum, so, when we don’t use the curriculum, WAEC will not take somebody’s book to prepare test items, if you don’t use the curriculum, either you will go ahead of WAEC, or you will go behind them,” he explained.
The workshop was also attended by Coordinators, and TST members
By// Steven Ansah.
Source// Obohnewsonline.com.
Obohnewsonline 