Madam Faustina Gyeketey, a 30-year-old English teacher at the Obokrom Junior High School (JHS) in the Central Region, has won the overall national "Best Teacher Award" for 2007. For her prize, she is to have a GH¢ 40,000 (¢400 million) house to be built at a place of her choice. The award ceremony, which took place at the Tamale Jubilee Park, was on the theme: "Quality education: Teacher participation in the new education reform". Madam Victoria Mwalibie, a blind teacher at the School for the Blind in Wa and Mr. Issah Ibrahim Shaibu, an Information Communication Technology (ICT) Coordinator at the Wa Senior High School, were the first and second runners up respectively. Madam Mwalibie took home a Peugeot saloon car valued at 18,000 Euros and a computer, while Mr. Shaibu also received a 16,000-Euro Peugeot saloon car and a computer. In an address read on his behalf by his Chief Adviser, Mrs. Mary Chinery-Hesse, President John Agyekum Kufuor admonished teachers to desist from acts that undermine the ethics and standards of their noble profession. He said recent reports of increasing teacher absenteeism, abuse of pupils and unwillingness to accept postings to deprived communities were a blot on the profession and had eroded the respect and confidence that people had for teachers. "This day must therefore serve as a time for sober reflection and a pledge by teachers engaged in these acts to change for the better", the President said. On the theme for the occasion, President Kufuor stated that teachers were the heart beat of the new educational reform, noting that for the programme to achieve its objective the country needed a highly skilled, technologically advanced and dynamic workforce to fuel it.