Ms Elizabeth Ohene, Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education, has said that for effective industrial development of the country, special emphasis should be placed on the teaching and learning of science, technical skills and mathematics. She said it was against that background that the Ministry of Education Science and Sports had not only encouraged the study of those subjects in all training colleges, but had also designated 15 of them as science colleges where in-depth studies were being made in the fields of science, technology and mathematics. Addressing the first Diploma graduation ceremony of the Presbyterian Training College (PTC) at Akropong Akuapem at the weekend, Ms Ohene noted that the upgrading of the teacher training colleges was aimed at improving education at the basic level. In all 381 graduants made up of 247 males and 131 females were awarded with diploma in Basic Education, Technical Skills, Pre-Vocational and Catering, Pre-Vocational and Art, Music and Dance, Physical Education and Ghanaian Languages. Ms Ohene said the time had come when teacher training colleges should not be considered as dumping grounds for unemployed youth who only took teaching as a last resort or as a conduit to other professional and academic attainments, but rather be for teacher trainees who had the love and desire to make teaching their profession. She noted that for the upgrading of post secondary teacher training institutions to diploma awarding ones to achieve the objective, the quality of intake of students would have to be improved. "Again, the quality of staff and teaching in the institutions would also have to be improved so that there would be a dramatic improvement in the quality of the products that emerged from those institutions". Ms Ohene said government had demonstrated its belief that improving teacher education was central to the success of the new education reforms. She said it was against that background that infrastructural development and improvement in the various colleges had received greater attention by the construction of new libraries, science blocks and additional classroom blocks at all the teacher training colleges. The Minister said the magnitude of resources that the government was pumping into the training of teachers required that students in those institutions take full advantage of the opportunity provided for teaching and learning, by disciplining themselves and making effective use of their time. Ms Ohene said the government was conscious of the challenges that were confronting training colleges, especially this period of transition from the post-secondary to the tertiary level and gave the assurance that the problems would be addressed. The Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, Right Reverend Dr Yaw Frimpong Manso, in his address commended the College on its outstanding performance at all levels and challenged the graduants to project good virtues of integrity, dedication, knowledge skills and commitment as evidence of Presbyterian orientation. The Principal, Mr Emmanuel Osei in his report said the College; the oldest institution of higher learning in Ghana was established in 1842 by the Presbyterian Church of Ghana. He said as far back as 1911, efforts were made by the Church to turn the college into a university, but that could not materialize adding that the nearest the college came towards offering a tertiary course was in 1965 when it was turned into a Mathematics and Science Specialist College. The Principal expressed worry about problems of staff accommodation saying that bungalows meant for individual families were shared by two or more families, a situation which sometimes led to friction among them. He appealed to the government as a matter of urgency to provide the College with more staff accommodation. The Principal also appealed for the rehabilitation of roads on the campus adding that "the beauty of the College campus was seriously marred by the village type of roads". He said even though Information Communication Technology (ICT) formed part of curriculum of teacher training colleges, the institution seriously lacked the equipments that would prepare the students adequately to teach the pupils computer studies. He said the College out of its own resources had managed to set up ICT laboratory with only 40 computers but this was inadequate for a population of 1,300 students. Source: GNA