How to help teachers to be more successful; Tips for Ghana Education Service (GES) and the National Inspectorate Board
The most daunting challenge facing Ghana today is the fact that a good many government agencies are stocked with officials with huge academic degrees and hefty bureaucratic titles but the essential hands-on tasks still remain undone either from neglect, or lack of skill, commitment and supervision. Who will doubt that had there been the right systems, expertise and the so-called “accountability” there will be productivity to raise the standards of living in the country for everybody?
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To implement the simplest policies seemed such gigantic nightmares for the government officials. The country continues to stay poor and indebted for the simple reason that there isn’t value for money considering the huge wage and administrative bills in the nation’s yearly budgets. In education – for instance - such slackness is serious, in that the youth suffer lasting intellectual (cognitive) and practical (affective) losses.
Two news items suggested this week’s column. One was an evaluation report by the National Inspectorate Board (Daily Graphic, May 9, 2015) titled, “Some basic school teachers do not prepare lesson notes”. From “Flash inspections”, the report blamed the failures on “teachers absenteeism, teacher preparedness, effectiveness of circuit supervisors” and so on.
The other item came from “Myjoyonline” (May 11, 2015) with the headline , “Managers of education to be demoted if … GES warns”. Performance contracts for all regional and district directors, headmasters, head teachers and teachers were suggested.
Proactive and productive
Hopefully, today’s column may help some schools and the public officials, to be proactive and productive.
First of all, the private schools continue to be more successful with Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) scores - and in the placement of their students in the best secondary schools - not because of academic degrees and gigantic titles but for the simple reason that teachers do report to work and they perform. And - most of all - there’s supervision, in many cases, by the proprietors themselves or by the assigned head teachers.
[I often cite the sterling example of the late Mrs Theresa Lomotey of Rect Academy, Accra. Before founding her school, the lady possessed merely a secondary school certificate from Adonten Secondary School, Aburi. However, in 2006, Rect Academy topped the Ga West District in BECE performance. In 2007, the school was awarded the 1st position in Academic Excellence of all the 16,000 or so basic schools in Ghana. Her commitment and daily supervision were solid. My experiences - doing weekly in-service training workshops for her teachers - confirmed the truth in the 6 Ps: Proper Prior Preparation Prevents Poor Performance.]
Information Technology
In a column titled, “How to improve BECE results – District by district” (March 26, 2012), I suggested that for effective teaching, it is important that Information Technology is used for the following key structural requirements: 1. Schemes of Work / Weekly Forecasts; 2. Lesson Notes / Instructional Strategies; and 3. Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs).
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Across the subject areas, the schemes of work or weekly forecasts show - week by week - the specific topics in each subject to be taught each term to meet the requirements of the GES syllabus. The lesson notes or instructional strategies show the step by step methods or activities in how the various topics will be taught and assessed for successful outcomes. The TLMs are the very lessons that support the schemes, and they complement the use of regular textbooks.
Those three requirements are mutually inclusive; they support each other, and must be structurally sound and used effectively. Prepared, computerised, and available ahead of time, all materials must be ready for use before day one of week one of every new term. These days, Information Technology helps to eliminate the cumbersome chores of repetitive, term-by- term, year-after-year handwritten notes in bulky notebooks which many teachers dread, and do not do anyway (as the inspectorate teams have finally found out!).
The idea is to create, store, access, transmit and update information continually. The time saving effort will increase productivity where all materials are available for everybody in the system, including the students themselves - who tend to be empty handed without the information and materials they need to study and pass the BECE.
Under stress
The frustration of the old process puts undue stresses on many teachers, especially the new teachers and national service personnel. Many handwritten materials tend not to be available for immediate use in classrooms anyway; they pile up as heaps of heavy notebooks on the administrators’ desks for “vetting”, as they call it.
The administrative inputs and support for developing successful lessons and teaching materials are so important that the responsibility should not be left solely at the discretion of teachers. The preparation of suitable lessons has to be handled expertly. For example: Many of the “ditto, ditto” type entries found in many schemes and lesson notes – meaningless in many instances - can be eliminated once and for all, and replaced by superior actionable details or activities.
Once computerised, the updates have to be undertaken termly or yearly as necessary. The practice will remove obsolescence, errors, irrelevancies, while adding both “supplementary” and “complementary” materials as needed.
Training centre
On the larger national scale, each district will need to select – within its defined boundary - a suitable training centre as a production hub.
The selected centre must have computers, electricity and Internet facilities to serve as a distribution point to cater for the deprived schools in the district.
Additionally, each district must gather the key personnel – teachers and administrative staff with the curricular and computer savvy – as the leaders. Selected BECE students must be pulled occasionally in to help with the computer inputs. What better way to prepare the youth than by involving them actively in their own education! The materials produced at the centres may then be distributed to the various schools, especially those without computers or electricity. Where there is a will, there is a way!
[Email: anishaffar@gmail.com]