The Community Volunteer Teacher Programme (CVTP), aimed at providing quality professional teacher training to talented and motivated young people who want to develop professional skills and help their local communities, is to be implemented next year in five deprived regions of the country.
The 12.5 million pounds five-year programme, which is to be implemented by Teach2Teach International, a non-governmental organisation, would benefit the Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Volta and Brong Ahafo regions.
Under the programme, 50 young motivated youth interested to stay and teach in their communities, would be trained each year.
Speaking at a roundtable discussion to build consortium of social impact funders to support the CVTP work of the Teach2Teaach International, the Founder of Teach2Teach International, Anita Lowenstein Dent said the programme was to help build the skills of senior high school graduates who are interested in teaching to enter teaching in their communities to address the shortage of teachers in the beneficiary regions.
The roundtable was sponsored by the Stanbic Bank Ghana and the Ghana Bankers Association.
She said the programme was also to improve numeracy and literacy especially in the three Northern Regions, which were palpably low and build the skills of the youth to address unemployment in the country.
“At the end of the programme, we expect to see that 33 per cent of CVTs remain as CVTs supported by a combination of their communities and local education authority grants, 33 per cent will access full professional tertiary teacher training courses, and 33 will enter paid employment or further training opportunities in another field,” Ms Dent said.
She said education was the best tool to address poverty and it was against that backdrop that Teach2Teach initiated the CVTP programme with School for Life to empower the youth to escape poverty.
The Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku-Prempeh in remarks made on his behalf lauded Teach2Teach for the initiative, saying government was committed to quality education delivery.
He indicated that government had completed a new curriculum for the basic school which was focused on creativity and would come into effect in the 2019/2020 academic year.
The Special Advisor to the President on the Sustainable Development Goals, Dr Eugene Owusu said the transformational development agenda of the country and the attainment of the Goal Four of the SDGs would be an illusion without quality.
Quality education, he said, was a right and efforts must be made by all stakeholders to promote quality education delivery in the country.
Dr Owusu pledged the support of the SDG Office to support the CVTP programme to train the youth to enter into teaching to promote education delivery in the country.
The Managing Director, Alhassan Andani stressed that all stakeholders must help to address the low numeracy and literacy rates in the country.
He pledged that GAD would allocate some resources from its Corporate Social Investment Fund to support the initiative of the Teach2Teach International.
A former Ghana Ambassador to South Africa, Amb Patrick Hayford entreated the well-to-do in Ghana to support the CVTP programme, and also entreated the consortium members to use their social positions to raise money for the programme.
By Kingsley Asare
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