Ghana’s harmonized Competency Based Training (CBT), has arrived in Generic skills as well.
34 teachers/facilitators of Mathematics, Science, ICT, Entrepreneurship and English skills participated in two training sessions in Accra, at Tema Technical Institute and at Accra Girls Vocational Training Center. The trainings were facilitated by a team of international and national experts and organized by the Ghana Skills Development Initiative (GSDI) in collaboration with the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET).
During this capacity building training generic teachers familiarized with the CBT approach, the related materials and modern facilitating methods. The teachers represent the 17 Pilot Schools, which are cooperating with GSDI to implement the cooperative apprenticeship program.
The participants got introduced to modern teaching/facilitating methods and could experience the advantages of these methods themselves through action oriented exercises.
Existing reservations about the new methods were washed away easily by the trainer team, so that the focus on imparting competencies and the spirit of action orientation was growing throughout the workshop.
The participants were aware that they are the designated Trainers of Trainers for their peer colleagues back in their schools. Therefore they showed great engagement to gain as much information as possible, to be able to transfer the acquired modern facilitating methods to their colleagues in their respective institutions.
Great results in adopting the modern methods were shown during the presentations of the participants’ group work. The task wasn’t easy - especially as the content of the workshop was very comprehensive and the time available for preparation was limited. Nevertheless the outcome of the group-presentations turned out very well.
With the now trained generic teachers and the already trained teachers for the trade areas in the respective training institutes, GSDI can give notice, that all the 17 Pilot Institutes have their own pool of Competency Based Training Facilitators. These CBT facilitators can share their knowledge with their colleagues and use it effectively in their lessons.
GSDI is now looking forward to the successful roll out of the cooperative apprenticeship training.
After all, the workshops helped to broadcast the COTVET CBT approach in the country.
