Dr. Mathew Opoku-Prempeh
A training workshop on the new Standards-Based Curriculum (SBC) to be implemented from September 2019 has commenced in Koforidua in the Eastern Region.
It’s being organized by the Ghana Education Service (GES), in collaboration with the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA), to help the teachers to implement the curriculum and provide a common understanding of concepts in the SBC.
During an opening ceremony, the Minister of Education, Dr. Mathew Opoku-Prempeh said an assessment of the content and structure of instruction in the various institutions of learning, particularly at the basic level, revealed that they had failed to adequately equip young people with the needed skills, understanding and innovation to help them contribute effectively to nation-building.
According to him, “The only way the country’s future can be secured is to provide students with skills – soft and hard- that will enable them to navigate this new world and the challenges that will be inherent in it.”
He urged the master trainers to take the workshop seriously in order to train teachers adequately in the new curriculum, saying “with a positive mindset, we will succeed and improve the standard of education in Ghana tremendously.”
Director-General of GES Professor Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, on his part, said “this curriculum is an important step in the quest to transform this nation by first improving the way that our children are taught and what they are taught.”
According to him, “A generation of Ghanaians that will be able to compete globally, think periodically and be well grounded in our national cultural norms will have an inestimably positive effect on the country’s fortunes, and I am convinced that this new curriculum will set us on the path to this desired outcome.”
The acting Executive Secretary of NaCCA Dr. Prince Hamid Armah, explained that “the orientation programme has been designed with full recognition of the exigency of the time we face, as well as the non-negotiable global imperative of quality education as required under SDG 4.”
He said that the purpose is to ensure the master trainers are well prepared to lead and support the training of 3,900 Regional, Metropolitan, Municipal and District teams across the country from 10-21 June 2019.
The teams that are being trained would be deployed from 1st July 2019 to the various district and circuits to train 152,000 kindergarten and primary school teachers, as well as head teachers and circuit supervisors.
From Daniel Bampoe, Koforidua