Deputy General Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) in Charge of Education and Professional Development, Mr. Thomas Baafi, has reiterated the Association?s commitment to improving quality of education in the country.
He said contrary to views that the Association as a trade union is only interested in demanding improved conditions of service and well being for its members it is equally interested in improving the skills of teachers to enhance delivery in the classroom.
Mr. Baafi said this during the climax of a week?s training workshop dubbed ?Project Overseas? for some 209 teachers drawn from the Upper East and Upper West Regions at the St John Bosco?s College of Education, Navrongo.
The training, collaborated by the Canadian Teachers Federation (CTF), an international partner to education delivery in the country, sought to train the teachers in leadership and administrative positions for both primary and second cycle institutions.
He said the mandate of GNAT to improving teacher performance in classrooms would come to naught if government failed to address the accommodation challenges confronting teachers at various levels.
?The teacher is the key linchpin of education delivery and the stronger the teacher in content and in pedagogy, the greater the possibility of producing high teaching and learning outcomes in schools,? he said.
He said teachers could not provide high professional services expected of them when their minds were preoccupied with accommodation issues adding that the Association had notice the shortage of school supplies including chalk and this it had slowed down the teaching and learning process.
He expressed appreciation to the participants and called on them to implement the skills they had acquired to enhance good educational delivery in their schools.
Leader of the CTF team, Mr. Martyn Chapman, assured the teachers of CTF?s continuous support in dealing with educational issues in the country and called for an enhanced collaboration between the two associations.
He commended GNAT and saying its professional development had helped to bring quality education to the fore in the country.
Vice President of GNAT, Mr. Shaibu Adams, and the Regional Director of Education, Mr. Paul Apanga, who both performed a symbolic tree planting exercise to commemorate 50 years of GNAT/CTF collaboration, called on teachers to stay committed to the teaching profession and improve teaching and learning at all levels.
Participants who were presented with certificates, called for the inclusion of ICT courses in subsequent training workshops.
The CTF, the longest serving collaborator of GNAT through its John Thompson Fellowship has provided leadership training to many first generation leaders and continues to render such services to Ghanaian teachers.?GNA
