Under the programme, 70 teaching volunteers, serving in 29 communities in the district, would in August this year, be enrolled to pursue the Untrained Teachers Diploma in Basic Education (UTDBE) programme under the sponsorship of the organization. The ultimate goal of the programme is to enhance academic performance of children in th district by making qualified teachers available to handle them. The Country Director of CRI, Mr Fredrick Ohene Sarfo, made this known in Tamale during the opening of a five-day training programme for the 70 volunteer teachers. The training, which was organised by the CRI in collaboration with the Ghana Education Service (GES), is designed to sharpen the skills of the teachers in teaching English, phonetics and Mathematics. It is the second of such training programmes organised this year, following an earlier one that was held in January, during which the teachers were reintroduced to basic teaching methodologies’ Sarfo said the organization had been recruiting and training persons to serve as volunteer teachers in deprived communities in the country since 1999. “We realized that most of the remote communities lacked qualified teachers and this impacted negatively on the performance of the children,” he stated. “We therefore decided to recruit and train these volunteer teacher programme had made a difference in impacting knowledge to students in deprived communities. “A large number of children, who were not receiving adequate tuition due to the lack of teachers, now have trained volunteer teachings handling them,” he said. He further indicated that, it was precisely because quality education would not be achieved by relying on untrained teachers that the RI thought it wise to help its volunteer teachers upgrade their skills to become professional teachers. One of the volunteer teachers, Mr. Saibu Mubarik, commended the CRI for sponsoring volunteer teachers in the district. He said it was the dream of most volunteer teachers to become professional teachers’ and, and, therefore, expressed the hop that the beneficiary would thankful advantages of the Diploma training programme.
|
