GES to meet public school heads over lesson note writing
Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Minister for Education, says the Ghana Education Service at the appropriate time will engage heads of public schools and circuit supervisors to discuss matters of lesson note writing by teachers in the country
The forthcoming stakeholders meeting follows a question posed to the Education Minister in an interview monitored by AcademicWeek on whether is it compulsory for teachers to submit handwritten lesson notes to heads of school.
In reply to the question, Dr Osei Yaw Adutwum said the management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) soon will engage headteachers and circuit supervisors across the country to consider printed lesson notes from teachers.
“In this 21st century, it is not obligatory for teachers to write lesson notes. The Management of the Ghana Education Service has put in place measures to ensure printed lesson notes are accepted by headteachers,” the Minister added.
In a related development, the Education Service has said lesson note writing by government school teachers will end after the distribution of the Mate 1 laptops to all public school teachers across the country has been completed.
In a statement to address a debate as to whether lesson notes should be handwritten or printed, especially in the midst of the ‘one teacher, one laptop’ program, the Service said it is, for now, mandatory for teachers to prepare the notes.
“It is mandatory for every school teacher to prepare a lesson note, manually (handwritten) or electronically (printed) which must be approved by the head of schools and supervisors,” GES said in a press release copied to AcademicWeek.
The management noted it had discussed with teacher unions and reached a consensus that both types of lesson notes (written or printed) should be accepted but based on an agreement between a teacher and his/her circuit supervisor.
“If a supervisor agrees that it should be prepared and submitted electronically, it should be allowed. Where it cannot be transmitted electronically, a printout of typed lesson notes should be submitted for vetting and approval,” it stated.
The management of the Ghana Education Service (GES) added that “Where for any valid reason if it cannot be prepared electronically, it should be done manually based on the agreement between the teacher and supervisor.”
The Education Service further indicated that the traditional way of preparing lesson notes after the state-of-the-art brand new laptops have been duly distributed to all government school teachers will be phased out completely.
“Management wishes to emphasis that the feasibility phasing out of the manual preparation of lesson notes will be discussed at the appropriate time when every teacher has received his/her laptop and trained,” GES said in the release.
