The Bolgatanga Municipal Directorate of Education has held a forum for Heads of Basic Schools in the Municipality to share ideas on supervision and management in schools for effective teaching and learning. Explaining the rationale for organising the durbar, Mr. Sylvester Dere, a Deputy Director of education said a survey conducted in the Municipality with the help of Link Community, an NGO, revealed that absenteeism, ineffective use of contact hours, poor correspondence and ineffective supervision were hampering effective teaching and learning in the area. He called on the Heads to frankly deliberate and suggest ways of improving the situation. Some of the head teachers shared their success stories on how they had achieved punctuality in their schools by rewarding the best teachers especially the punctual ones. The Headmistress of St. Charles’ Primary said the PTA of her school presented cloth as prizes to hardworking teachers. She noted that a motivated teacher would do everything to ensure effective teaching and urged the Directorate to think of practicable ways of motivating teachers. She said the best teacher award was rather not motivating since teachers selected were never honoured in the Bolgatanga Municipality. Mr. Benedict Yinddol, Assistant Director for Human Resource Management and Development of the Directorate assured the Heads that the Directorate was putting a motivating package in place. Some of these included promotion out of turn for teachers in difficult areas, motorcycles, bicycles and scholarships for rural teachers and a Teachers’ Village project. He emphasized the importance of effective use of contact hours to ensure that the syllabus was covered and adequate exercises given to pupils. He noted that the Directorate had intensified its monitoring and supervision activities and would do all it could to achieve satisfactory results in teaching and learning Source: GNA