The National Teaching Council (NTC) in collaboration with the National Service Scheme (NSS) has launched an initiative to equip National Service Personnel (NSP) with no teaching background with the basic requisite skills to effectively teach within their one-year service period.
The module, which is dubbed ‘Pedagogy training for untrained teachers on NSS teaching module’, is aimed at ensuring that NSPs deployed to classrooms for their mandatory one-year service enter with some basic teaching skills.
This training forms part of the new NSS agenda, which moves away from ‘mobilising for deployment’ to ‘mobilising for employment’.
Under the pedagogy training initiative, NSPs will be given an initial two-week training before they start work and be offered intermittent training throughout the year-one period; after which certification will be provided to become fully-fledged teachers and absorbed by the Ghana Education Service (GES).
Every year, the NSS posts approximately 41,000 service personnel to work as teachers. While around 36,000 of these personnel are graduates of Bachelor of Education (BSC Edu.) degree courses from Colleges of Education and Universities, there is still almost 5,000 personnel who have received no training in pedagogy or education who are posted to teach.
The training is targetted at providing this group with the requisite skills to teach throughout their one year of service, Minister of Education Dr. Yaw Osei Adutwum indicated.
Chief of Staff, Akosua Fremaa Osei Opare, in her keynote address stated that education is a fundamental human right and a critical tool for socio-economic development; however, achieving the full potential of education requires strategic partnerships and innovative collaboration among key stakeholders – just like what the Ghana Education Service is doing through the NTC and NSS.
She said launching the pedagogy, the first of its kind the country, will therefore impact positively on education outcomes in the country. She further urged the service personnel who will be equipped with the teaching methodology skills to use the acquired expertise to impart knowledge to children they will be teaching.
Dr. Adutwum also emphasised that the initiative to train NSPs is a laudable on, as it will help in providing the teachers with skills to offer quality fourth industrial revolution (4IR) requirement lessons.
He stated that the training will also better-position NSPs to prepare their lesson plans and be more effective to deliver effective and efficient teaching and learning, and also support government’s transformation agenda.
On his part, the Director of NSS, Osei Assibey Antwi, mentioned that over the years these persons have been sent to schools without a strand of knowledge on how to conduct themselves with classroom management; no knowledge of childcare, child psychology and support services among others; hence, they were left to their fate to do magic – but all that is about to change.
“After reviewing the trend, the NSS decided to partner the NTC to equip personnel with training before posting them, to create a meaningful impact at their various schools this time around,” he said.
