400 Junior High School teachers within the Obuasi Municipal and Obuasi East District have undergone training to prepare them adequately to adapt to the new curriculum of the Ghana Education Service.
The workshop, which was fully sponsored by AngloGold Ashanti, Obuasi Mine, was also meant to improve the Basic Education Certificate Examination pass rate in Obuasi, which currently stands at 90% to 96%.
According to the Social Development and Gender superintendent of AngloGold, Mavis Nana Yaa Kyei, who spoke to the media during the close-out session of the workshop, once the teachers are able to adapt to the new skills in teaching, they will be able to impart it into their students which will result in improvement in their BECE performance.
AngloGold Ashanti in support of local Assemblies’ commitment to education development in Obuasi, through its 3-year Social Management Plan, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Obuasi Municipal and Obuasi East District Directorates of Education.
This was to jointly implement a 3-year Basic Education Improvement Project with the aim of contributing to increasing the BECE pass rate from 86.6 percent in 2018 to 90 percent by 2021.
Under the MoU, AngloGold Ashanti Obuasi Mine, through collaboration with the Obuasi Municipal and Obuasi East Directorates of Education, over the period, has implemented a plethora of interventions to improve education access, teachers’ delivery and school supervision.
Madam Kyei revealed that the highly successful 3-year Socio-economic Management Plan has birthed a 10-year Socio-economic Management Plan, which has education highly featured.
She mentioned that there are three (3) pillars in the Plan and key to the Improved Social Development Plan is education.
“In education, we seek to bridge infrastructural gap, especially at the basic school level, donate teaching and learning materials to schools, continent with infrastructural capacity workshop, promote STEM and support ICT education,” she added.
The participants who were mainly English, Mathematics, Science, Social studies and Religious and Moral Education teachers were taken through Differentiated Approach to Teaching and Learning, Mode of Assessment and a Monitoring Plan Assessment Protocols and Process, How to group learners and provide specific, tailor-made teaching to each group, during the period.
Kwabena Owusu Nketia, the Obuasi East District Director of Education, has underscored the benefit of refresher courses for teachers. He said it was important for teachers to improve and be abreast with modern trends in education.
He said the Directorate relishes AGA’s enormous contributions toward Education in Obuasi.
He said so far the various interventions by AngloGold towards teaching and learning are already yielding some positive outcomes.
He was optimistic that the 4-day training will help equip teachers with the knowledge and skills to enable them make positive impacts on their students.
Anglogold Ashanti also presented ten (10) laptops to the two Education Directorates.
The laptops were donated by RIGWORLD, a Sub-contractor of AGA.