Expedite passage of the colleges of education bill - Ndago
The Chairman of the Conference of Principals of Colleges of Education, Mr Alfred Ndago, has appealed to the government to expedite the passage of the Colleges of Education Bill into law.
He said the passage of the bill into law would give a clear direction to the management of the various teacher training colleges in the country.
Mr Ndago who doubles as the Principal of the St John Bosco’s College of Education made the appeal at the second congregation of the college at Navrongo in the Upper East Region.
He described as frustrating and uncertain the transition of colleges of education to the tertiary sector. He added that “stakeholders have failed to keep deadlines of the roadmap and played politics around the issues.”
Mr Ndago explained that the bill of the colleges of education was expected to be passed before the end of 2011 but three weeks to the end of the year, nothing concrete was said or done about the bill.
“Instead, feverish preparations are being made to fast track the passage of the Bill establishing the two new universities in the Brong Ahafo and Volta Region. Meanwhile, lecturers in the colleges of education have been debarred from the best teacher awards for the past two years, they have suffered promotion discrimination, low salaries and have their backs being broken from extra duty activities’, he said.
He said the five semester programme for the colleges designed and approved for implementation to ensure that trainees content knowledge base was strengthened had remained on the shelves for the past two years because government had not been able to find the needed funds to quickly provide the infrastructural needs of each college to accommodate level 300 trainees in the fifth semester.
“What should engage government is to reposition the colleges of education to serve as efficient, effective and progressive centres of teaching and learning. Real education change will not come about by doing more of the same things that have been tried before in the form of refining what already exists but ensuring qualitative difference in how we think about what we do”, he said.
“We cannot and should not shift our national priority to some other things than education. We are all responsible for the falling standards of education in Ghana and the teacher should not be isolated and blamed for it. As Ghanaians, we know good things but why are educationists and politicians not up to the task?, he questioned.
Source: Daily Graphic
