He explained that the posting of NSS personnel to complement the efforts of teachers was critical in filling vacancies, especially in the hard-to-reach areas where even trained teachers were not ready to accept posting to.

Addressing the media on Friday, in Accra, on the role of the scheme in the development of education in the country, Mr Osei Assibey Antwi explained that although the scheme was not responsible for the training of teachers in the country, the scheme was ready to deploy NSS personnel to support teaching and learning anywhere in the country.

He stated that the posting of NSS personnel to fill vacancies across the nation by the scheme was particularly crucial especially in schools without trained teachers to support education development in the country.

The Executive Director spoke about the recent completion of a 10-day training programme in general pedagogy for 2,000 service personnel who had been deployed to teach in senior high and techni­cal schools.

Mr Assibey mentioned that the training was designed to support personnel to gain knowledge in teaching approaches and equip them with the foundational ped­agogical skills in preparation for their work in schools as teachers.

The Executive Director stated that personnel who successful­ly completed the programme had been issued with emergency licenses for a period of one year so they could qualify to teach in the country.

He pledged the scheme’s desire to put in place many prudent mea­sures to ensure that NSS personnel deployed become very useful to their host and the entire country.

The NSS for almost five decades deployed some of its personnel to assist in teaching in various pre-ter­tiary schools across the country.

Although the personnel are posted to all regions nationwide, those who benefit most are schools in deprived communities in the country that may not have the full complement of trained teachers in their schools due to numerous reasons.

The introduction of pedagogi­cal skills to enhance the teaching skills of the personnel is one of the innovations that have been introduced into the scheme to make beneficiaries of the training more efficient in their teaching roles during the service period and beyond.

The GES declared the total number of vacancies in the various districts in the country leading to the NSS posting personnel to fill such vacancies.