The Deputy Minister for Education (MoE), John Ntim Fordjour, has hinted that the Education Ministry will begin the training of 100,000 public pre-tertiary teachers from the northern sector in digital literacy.

The training, which is expected to begin in July 2022, will be supervised by the National Teaching Council (NTC) and executed by SteadyX, an international IT Consortium.

The training, the Ministry of Education believes, will equip the teachers with skills in teaching in a digital age, teaching with multimedia and cybersecurity among others.

Rev. John Ntim Fordjour disclosed this in an interview at the side-line of the 50th Anniversary Speech and Prize Giving Day for Yendi Senior High School in the Northern Region on Saturday.

He stated that the training of 100 master trainers for the programme will begin on May 30, 2022, in Accra.

The Deputy Minister stated that the Akufo-Addo-led government was poised in equipping teachers with the requisite skills to enhance their teaching so as to make them much more productive in their field.

"It is worth noting that training of master trainers was launched last Friday and this is to pave way for the commencement of the training on Monday," he said.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour added that apart from the upcoming training for teachers from the northern sector, there has been numerous training for some teachers in the country as part of the gradual training of all teachers in the country.

Deepen collaboration

He mentioned that the MoE and the NTC in collaboration with Commonwealth Learning (an International Intergovernmental Organization solely concerned with the promotion and development of distance education and open learning) have between May and June 2021 trained 1050 teachers across the country in digital literacy.

Again, he mentioned that Instil Education, another IT company which has targeted training 10,000 teachers in digital literacy between June and December 2021 has already trained 5500 teachers and 38 master trainers for the national training programme.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour mentioned that under the Ghana Accountability of Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP), 43,000 teachers in the project schools have also been trained in digital literacy all geared towards ensuring that teachers in the country irrespective of location or status can make good use of IT in their teaching and learning.

The Deputy Minister indicated that MoE and NTC have established a strong collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning which is ready to support the establishment of an Open University in Ghana.

As part of the effort to strengthen the collaboration, the Commonwealth of Learning and the NTC from June to October last year trained 100 Master trainers and 4,000 teachers.

Rev. Ntim Fordjour was hopeful that with the current state of investment being made by the government, coupled with the distribution of laptops to teachers across the country, teachers would be able to maximise the use of IT in their daily activities to promote effective teaching and learning to enhance the transformation of the nation through education.