Lesson note writing by teachers is a total waste of time – Bawumia
Vice-President of Ghana, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia commending prospective teachers for their enormous contribution to the country’s education sector has said the worst part of the teaching profession is lesson note writing.
In his address at Ghana’s digitization drive under the theme “Transforming an economy through digitization: The Ghana story,” held at Ashesi University, he said it is for this reason the government has provided teachers with laptops.
“We have provided 350,000 teachers with laptops under the “One teacher, One laptop policy.” For teachers, the writing of lesson notes into notebooks apart from being stressful is a time-consuming activity,” Mahamudu stated at the event.
The Vice-President of the Republic added that “with the curriculum materials already installed on the state of the art laptops, the lesson notes can be downloaded onto the laptop to end the burdensome task of writing lesson notes.”
Mr Mahamudu Bawumia also disclosed the Akufo-Addo-led government in due course will distribute tablets loaded with course materials to students in all public Senior High Schools (SHSs) in the country to improve learning outcomes.
“Our next goal is to provide tablets to the Senior High School students and we have started working with publishers of the textbooks to preload all the tablets with required textbooks,” Akufo-Addo’s right-hand man disclosed.
He indicated that the Ministry of Education (MoE) under the auspices of the central government is in consultations with publishers to preload all the tablets with all the required textbooks for students in the public Senior High Schools.
Meanwhile, the management of the Ghana Education Service has said it after the distribution of the brand new state-of-the-art Mate 1 laptops to all government basic school teachers will phase out the writing of lesson notes.
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.
