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Government of Ghana and the Department for International Development (DFID), have developed projects worth over Ghc130 million to improve standards, core values and ethics of the teaching profession, the minister for education, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman has disclosed.

Professor Opoku-Agyeman said the projects would be put under the Transforming Teacher Education and Learning (T-TEL), and would seek to assist the National Teaching Council (NTC) over the next four years.

The minister made this disclosure when she took her turn at the “meet the press” series in Accra to outline the Ministry’s achievements, problems and plans for the coming year.

She also stated that Ghc13.8 million has been prepared to support the renovation of all Colleges of Education across the country.

The Minister revealed that enrolment in the Colleges of Education had increased from 9,000 to 15,000 after allowances for students at the Colleges of Education were replaced with the students’ loan two years ago.

“Over 4,800 students have already accessed the students’ loan to date. Contrary to rumours and speculations, no one took away the allowance of any student of the Colleges of Education,” she added.

On improving the performances of students in their external exams, Prof. Opoku-Agyemang said the Ministry of Education in collaboration with its relevant agencies had put in place measures to address the weaknesses of students.

According to her, the Ministry had organized training for science and mathematics teachers, as well as strengthened Information Communication Technology in schools, which she described as some measure by government to improve the performance of students.

“The major objective of the Ministry is to increase the numbers and quality of trained teachers especially in Languages, Mathematics and Science as these continue to hinder the academic mobility and eventually affect national development,” she stated.

She said the Ministry was working to finalize the policy on Open and Distance learning for Ghana to provide audio-visual lessons in Mathematics, English, Science, and Social Studies for students in their first year at the junior high school level.

She intimated the lessons on DVD and VCD would be distributed to schools while interactive e-exercise would be made available to senior high schools and Technical, Vocational Education and Training Institutes (TVET).

On Language Policy, Prof. Opoku-Agyemang reiterated the importance of language as an effective communication tool for leaning, adding that 12 million textbooks and Teachers’ Guides in all eleven Ghanaian languages under the National Literacy Acceleration Programme have been produced and distributed to schools.

“Research has proven that better learning outcomes are achieved at the early stages of education through the use of the language already acquired by the learner as a medium of teaching,” she noted.

Prof. Opoku-Agyemang announced that Ghana had emerged as one of the key performing countries and had registered tremendous progress on key performance indicators to measure the progress on six performance goals.

The goals include, expanding and improving early childhood care and education, Universal Primary Education for all, ensuring equitable access to appropriate learning needs and life-skills for youth and adult.

The rest of the goals are, achieving 50% improvement in adult literacy, eliminating gender parity, and providing quality education.