The National Education Leadership Institute programme is set to begin training for all District Directors of Education, Minister for Education, Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, has said.
According to him, that would help directors improve their skills, develop annual plans and strategies on ways to manage and put to good use, resources disbursed to them.
Dr Adutwum was speaking at the official opening of the 29th Annual Conference of Directors of Education (CODE), on Tuesday in Accra on the theme “Sustainability of free pre-tertiary education; The surest step to human resource development.”
The annual conference aims at creating the platform, to reflect on the previous year’s performance and also deliberate on quality pre-tertiary education delivery in the country, to inform policy and to suggest ways to improve on performance.
Dr Adutwum noted that in spite of challenges the education sector faced, the era of lambast and lament should be over, rather the intellect, knowledge, wisdom and skills acquired should be channelled into changing the system.
“We all have a role to play to move the education sector higher, we need to challenge and distinguish ourselves to learn and be more educated to be very impactful,” he said.
Dr Adutwum gave the assurance that he would support the directors with the necessary incentives and resources for them to work well to transform the education system.
The president of CODE, Mrs Bernice Ofori, said members of the group came from all 260 metropolitan, municipal and districts in the country.
She said “Directors of Education are working hard in the remotest and very difficult to reach communities wherever schools are located, some under very challenging conditions to make sure we fulfill our core mandate of better education delivery”.
Mrs Ofori said that although, the Pre-Tertiary education policy was a laudable idea and must be sustained, there were few challenges that posed serious threats to its sustainability.
Mrs Ofori reminded the authorities that teachers in deprived areas were still waiting for 20 per cent incentives which had been on the drawing board for far too long.
She said if implemented, it would encourage qualified teachers to accept postings to rural areas.
“It is our hope that recommendations on best practices and new approaches through the lens of the implementers would be considered and adopted by the Ministry to inform policy during the workshop on October23-29, 2022,” Mrs Ofori stated.
BY ANITA ANKRAH
