30 HEADMASTERS ATTEND PROFESSIONAL DEV COURSE (PAGE 40, NOV 12)

THIRTY headmasters from basic schools within the Cape Coast metropolis and the Elmina Municipality have benefited from a two-day professional development and leadership training programme under the British Council’s “Connecting Classroom” project.
The “Connecting Classroom” project, run by the British Council in 18 African countries, is aimed at forging sustainable partnership between Ghanaian teachers and their United Kingdom counterparts.
It provides young learners the opportunity to engage one another to provide international communication skills for learners and impart to them knowledge as agents of positive change in society.
The project is being executed by the British Council in conjunction with the Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (IEPA) of the University of Cape Coast (UCC).
The Project Co-ordinator, Ms Ivy Apreku, told the Daily Graphic in Cape Coast that the project was also based on the principles of diversity, curiosity, respect, mutuality and dialogue.
She said the programme had run since 2006 in Ghana and about 75 schools had been involved.
Ms Apreku said 16 teachers from the United Kingdom on a study tour joined their counterparts in the programme, dubbed: “Leadership in Learning and Community Cohesion”.
The Director of the IEPA of the UCC, Dr George K.T. Oduro, said research by the IEPA indicated that most headmasters at the basic school level did not know how to promote learning.
He said the IEPA entered into collaboration with the University of Cambridge to design a project to strengthen the capacity of headmasters in learning and leadership skills.
Dr Oduro said the Ghana Education Service (GES) mandated the IEPA to prepare headmasters in basic schools in learning and leadership skills.
That, he said, was to provide means of making schools benefit from the programme.
He said by institutionalising the programme, the IEPA had provided a monitoring and supervision system for the benefit of people.
Dr Oduro said there were also a number of training programmes by different bodies and non-governmental organisations in building the capacity of school heads but the methodology and focus used were different and often confused teachers.
He, therefore, appealed to the GES to co-ordinate to know which direction the programme should go.
Dr Oduro called on the GES to come up with an agenda that clearly defined the philosophy underlying headmaster preparation in the country and the methodology that it deemed appropriate for achieving such a philosophy.