The New Juaben South Municipal Education Directorate in collaboration with the Institute of Professional Educators and Instructors- Ghana IPEIG , has organised a day capacity building workshop designed to strengthen Headteachers’ ability to supervise effective curriculum implementation.
The training workshop was specialised to equip all 52 Heads of Basic Schools in the municipality with in-deph knowledge on 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 we saw that many of the teachers do not know how to prepare the new lesson plan so they only just download them from the internet and they don’t even understand what they have downloaded and so when they go to the school they teach differently from what they have downloaded and many of the Headteachers too do not understand the lesson plan so they only vet them and when you ask them questions they don’t understand it”
“So this year we decided that as part of one of my core mandate is to organise a refresher courses, in-service training and so we started with the Headteachers and the Coordinators so that they will understand what we are doing so that in their vetting they know how to vet well and also when they go back they will take the teachers through how to prepare the notes properly by themselves without coping online and present it for vetting sake” he added.
The Director further highlighted that in assessing factors accounted 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 workshop was facilitated by a team led by the Executive Director of Institute of Professional Educators and Instructors- Ghana IPEIG Dr. Godfred Marvin Owusu.
In his sessional address, he emphasised the need to bridge the gaps and lapses which the introduction of the new standard based curriculum has brought on both instructors and learners during instructional sessions.
According 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 the past two years”
“We’ve also realised that the teachers are not using the curriculum and so when we don’t use the curriculum WAEC will not take somebody’s book to prepare test item , so if you don’t use the curriculum either you will go ahead of WAEC or you will go behind WAEC” he explained further.
The workshop was also attended by Coordinators, and TST members.
Source:Mybrytfmonline.com/Ansah Stephen
