Dubbed ‘Private School Teachers Continuous Professional Development (PST-CPD)’, the four-day event, seeks to train 48 master trainers, who would intend train 20,000 private school teachers across the country.

Facilitators from University of Cape Coast (UCC) and the University of Education Winneba (UEW), would train participants in literacy and numeracy content, to help improve teaching standard in the country, at weekends.

The pilot programme is on the theme:“Preparing private school teachers into teaching profession through teacher competency training for quality teaching in Ghana.”

The Registrar of NTC, Dr Christian Addae Opoku, explained that the rollout of the programme was vital as it would provide untrained teachers the pedagogy needed to deliver on quality.

He said the programme“ is in consonance with NTC’s requirement that all in-service teachers of both private and public schools undertake periodic training to ensure quality delivery of lessons to learners.”

According to Dr Opoku, the programme could form the basis for the issuance of a temporary licence for all unqualified teachers, and urged them to take advantage of such initiatives and upgrade themselves.

He hinted that his outfit would from next year, enforce the teacher licensing policy, and entreated all qualified teachers, especially, those in private schools to apply for the teacher’s licence.

The Executive Director of GNACOPS, Mr Enoch Kwasi Gyetuah, commended the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Financeforextending its teaching training programme to private schools.

He said that the training would help enhance the competencies of participants and also boost their confidence to work effectively.

Gyetuah noted that the training programme would be carried out at 24 centres across the country.

He said that GNACOPS had developed the Child Education Support Scheme to ensure that monitoring of the programme was achieved, and also provide insurance cover for teachers.

One of the facilitators, Mr Seth Kofi Ntifrom the UCC, said important topics have been chosen for the training to help participants carry out their duties professionally.

Mr Samuel Kakra Boamah, a master trainer of the programme, said he expected to acquire in-depth knowledge from experienced facilitators, which would be transferred to other teachers, to improve teaching and learning.