281 Trainees pass out of Mount Mary College of Education

Two hundred and eighty-one teacher trainees, made up of 134 males and 147 female, have passed out of the Mount Mary College of Education, (MOMACO) Somanya at a ceremony held at the College at the weekend.

The graduation ceremony was the ninth since the introduction of Diploma in Basic Education (DBE) programme in 2004. 

Five of them had first class honours, 52 had second class upper division, 131 had second class lower division and seven had pass. They were awarded Diploma in Basic Education (DBS) in French and General courses. 

The Director of the Institute of Education, University of Cape Coast, Professor Frederick Ocansey, on behalf of the Vice Chancellor conferred the DBE certificates on them to begin their teaching career in the basic schools.

The Chairman of the Governing Council, who is also the Bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Koforidua, Most Rev. Joseph Afrifah-Agyekum admonished the fresh teachers to be morally upright as they took the official teaching appointment with the Ghana Education Service.

He told the teachers that they should be dedicated and committed and above all, have passion for the job and urged them not to lose sight of that fact, and do the work to promote effective teaching and learning at their various stations.

The Principal of the College, Mr Peter Attafuah in his report, said even though five of the candidates had first class honours, the first time in the history of the College none of them qualified for the excellence award this year at the Institute of Education, University of Cape Coast.

He urged all the continuing students to study hard and obtain more first class honours with very high cumulative Grading Point that would enable them to win the excellence award.

Mr Attafuah noted that the exercise of migrating staff of the public Colleges of Education from the GES payroll onto that of tertiary had been completed and they were awaiting its implementation. 

He urged those working on the document to fast track the process to avoid any serious migration of qualified and experienced staff to other tertiary institutions.

The immediate past Deputy Chief Executive, Ghana Cocoa Board, Dr Yaw  Adu Ampomah, who was the guest speaker, urged the Ministry of Education and the GES to give the Mount Mary College of Education enough resources for the training of more teachers of French to teach French in the basic schools.

Future leaders

He said, “This will greatly improve the quality of the future leaders that we produce in Ghana to make them competitive in our part of the world’’.

He said Ghana was surrounded by French speaking countries and was also a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) thus, needed to provide graduates in French to fill related vacancies when the need arose. 

Dr Adu Ampomah also suggested that the present duration for senior high school should be increased from three to four years in order to enhance quality academic work and the training of future leaders for the competitive world.

The College Governing Council presented the five teacher trainees, Messrs Caleb Setorglo, George Kofi Mensah Siakou, Robert Dzamefe, Richard Kwabena Effa-Kyei, and Ms Mavis Asare-Kwateng, who had the first class honours with an undisclosed amount of money to serve as motivation to the continuing student trainees.