The Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, has affirmed the preparedness of the scheme towards the development of education in the country by posting more than 40,000 NSS personnel to the sector yearly.
He explained that the posting of NSS personnel to complement the efforts of teachers was critical in filling vacancies, especially in the hard-to-reach areas where even trained teachers were not ready to accept posting to meanwhile children in such communities also needed teachers to teach them.
Addressing the media on Friday in Accra on the role of the scheme in the development of education in the country, Mr Antwi explained that although the scheme was not responsible for the training of teachers in the country, so far as they assisted in the deployment of NSS personnel to teach made their role equally important.
He stated that the posting of NSS personnel to fill vacancies across the nation by the scheme was particularly crucial especially in schools without trained teachers to support education development in the country.
The Executive Director spoke about the recent completion of a 10-day training programme in General Pedagogy for 2,000 service personnel who have been deployed to teach in senior high and technical schools.
He stated that the training programme was organised by the NSS in collaboration with the National Teaching Council (NTC), Ghana Education Service Ghana (GES) and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC) to provide the requisite skills for the beneficiaries to function effectively in the classroom.
Mr Assibey mentioned that the training was designed to support personnel to gain knowledge in teaching approaches and equip them with the foundational pedagogical skills in preparation for their work in schools as teachers.
The Executive Director stated that personnel who successfully completed the programme have been issued with emergency licenses for a period of one year so they could qualify to teach in the country.
He pledged the scheme’s desire to put in place many prudent measures to ensure that NSS personnel deployed become very useful to their host and the entire country.
The NSS for almost five decades deployed some of its personnel to assist in teaching in various pre-tertiary schools across the country.
Although the personnel are posted to all regions nationwide, those who benefit most are schools in deprived communities in the country that may not have the full complement of trained teachers in their schools due to numerous reasons.
The introduction of pedagogical skills to enhance the teaching skills of the personnel is one of the innovations that have been introduced into the scheme to make beneficiaries of the training more efficient in their teaching roles during the service period and beyond.
The GES declared the total number of vacancies in the various districts in the country leading to the NSS posting personnel to fill such vacancies.
