National Teaching Council Trains 536 Non-Professional Teachers

The National Teaching Council (NTC) is spearheading a four-week training programme for five hundred and thirty-six teachers, mostly from private schools, to build their capacities to enhance the quality of their teaching.

This programme was drawn by the National Teaching Council (NTC) in partnership with Edify, a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Teachers, who are not yet professional teachers, will be equipped with skills to practise until they eventually become trained qualified teachers.

At the end of the training, the teachers will be given provisional certificates to enable them to teach in their schools for three years, renewable each year.

However, after three years, the teachers must pursue the professional education programme to become professional teachers and write the teacher licensure exam to be able to continue to teach.

The Director of Registration and Licensing of the NTC, Francis Addai, has said the training was a pilot programme which would ultimately be expanded to include all non-professional teachers across the country.

He said the training was being piloted in the Greater Accra, Ashanti, Western, Volta and Eastern regions.

The rationale for the training, he said, was to ensure that non-professional teachers had some form of training to enhance their skills even as they took steps to become trained professional teachers.

“We want every teacher teaching in the country to have professional training before they can teach. If you are not trained as a doctor or lawyer, you cannot practise medicine or law. The same thing applies to teaching,” he said.