The National Teaching Council (NTC) had a three-day workshop at Kumasi from Thursday, November 24 to Saturday, November 26 to develop the tools for selecting applicants for the new category of award introduced by the Council, the Most Outstanding College of Education Tutor.
NTC has been assigned the responsibility of organizing the Ghana Teacher Prize (GTP) since 2018 by the Ministry of Education. GTP was known as Best Teacher Awards until 2018 when it was rebranded to meet global standards. The rebranding has become necessary to enable the programme to conform to the standards of the Global Teacher Prize which started in the year 2014.
Dr Benedict Osei-Owusu, an NTC governing board member on behalf of the Registrar, Dr Christian Addai-Poku welcomed the committee and officially opened the session. In his welcome address, he stated that GTP aims to honour outstanding teachers for their exemplary performance and ground-breaking work that has affected and transformed the lives of students under their care, the school and the community. It further serves as a source of motivation for other teachers.
He further gave the background to the introduction of the new category by referring to this year’s GTP grand durbar organized at the University for Development Studies (UDS), Tamale. “During the celebration, the Minister for Education recommended that the award scheme should be extended to teachers in the higher education sector.
The Council has therefore decided to extend it to Tutors of Colleges of Education in the 2023 edition and possibly, scale it up to cover the lecturers at the Universities in the future”. Hey announced that the prize attached to the new category will be a 4×4 pick-up. This category will initially be sponsored by Transforming Teaching, Education & Learning, T-TEL.
Professor Christine Adu-Yeboah of the Institute of Education, University of Cape Coast chairs the seven-member committee. The other members are the National Coordinator for Ghana Teacher Prize, a rep each from PRINCOF, CETAG and GTEC, as well as two astute educationists.
The committee is tasked to develop the following tools,
➢ The selection criteria for the Most Outstanding College of Education Tutor
➢ Application form for the Most Outstanding College of Education Tutor
➢ GTP screening guidelines for the Most Outstanding College of Education Tutor
➢ Interview selection criteria for the Most Outstanding College of Education Tutor
➢ Scoresheet for the Most Outstanding College of Education Tutor
The council is set to open the portal for applications in January 2023 for teachers and education workers to apply for the following categories.
➢ Pre-tertiary teacher
➢ College of Education Tutor
➢ Teacher in leadership and administration
➢ Non-teaching