The Minister of Education, Mrs Betty Mould Iddrisu, on Wednesday told Parliament that government would implement the 20 per cent allowance for teachers in the rural areas this year.
�The ministry has identified the unwillingness of the teachers to
accept postings to deprived districts as constituting serious
impediment to quality education delivery,ďż˝ she said.
The problem however was how to identify and define schools and the
teachers who qualify for the package.
She stated she was in a discussion with the Minister of Finance
and Economic Planning to identify funding sources that would enable
this incentive to be implemented.
She was speaking on the floor of Parliament at question time.
She said the ministry was making efforts to construct additional
teachersďż˝ accommodation to motivate the teachers to accept posting in
the deprive areas. �The ministry is also formulating Teachers Housing Policy to help teachers acquire housing units across the country,� she said, adding, a vehicle acquisition policy is almost completed to facilitate the acquisition of motorbikes and cars especially for those in the rural areas.
She said several interventions had been made to address the
shortage of teachers in Ghana both in the short and long terms.
According to the minister, the 9000 teachers that were churned
out yearly from the teacher training colleges would be posted to basic
schools, a measure that aims at revamping rural schools.
The Untrained Teacher Training Programme had been also been introduced.
She said the programme was an alternative route to train more
pupil teachers who were already based in the rural areas indicating
that so far about 21,000 of such teachers had been trained and were
teaching in rural schools as qualified teachers,
The minister explained that 5000 of these trainees would complete
the programme in December 2011.
Mrs Iddrisu said a committee had been set up to address the
challenges faced by teachers concerning the delays in the payment of
their salary arrears and added that the Accountant General had
introduced a system in which teachers across the country would be
place on separate server solely responsible for teachers salary.
Reacting to a question on distance learning, Mrs Iddrisu said
government had established the Centre for National Distance Learning
and Open Schooling (CENDLOS) under the Ministry of Education to
harmonise and regulate distance learning in Ghana.
She noted that CENDLOS had developed two major documents that
would ensure that distance Education Programmes in the public
Universities were harmonized and properly regulated.
These documents, she said, would soon form the basis for a
national legal framework governing distance education in the country.
Concerning the establishment of vocational schools in Ghana, the
minister reiterated government resolve to establish in each district a
vocational institute to promote Technical and Vocational Training.
Source: GNA
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