SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion pro­pos­es to es­tab­lish a new di­vi­sion which will be re­spon­si­ble for Teacher Train­ing and De­vel­op­ment. John Roopc­hand, head of the Teach­ing and Teacher De­vel­op­ment at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing of a ten-day work­shop on spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion at the Rudranath Capildeo Learn­ing Re­source Cen­tre at McBean, Cou­va.

The work­shop is be­ing joint­ly host­ed by the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) and the Cana­di­an Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (CFT). Roopc­hand said the pro­posed plan seeks to col­lab­o­rate and part­ner with key stake­hold­ers in ed­u­ca­tion to ef­fec­tive­ly and ef­fi­cient­ly man­age teach­ing and teacher de­vel­op­ment from re­cruit­ment to re­tire­ment.

Roopc­hand said the new unit would al­so seek to pro­fes­sion­alise teach­ing and es­tab­lish a sys­tem of de­vel­op­ment in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion. "The aim is to or­gan­ise teach­ers' work so that they may op­er­ate as true pro­fes­sion­als," he said. Roopc­hand said it is im­por­tant for knowl­edge and new tech­nolo­gies in the field to be shared with all.

"It is sad to con­fess that we have had cas­es where teach­ers grad­u­at­ed from their re­spect­ed ter­tiary lev­el teacher in­struc­tions af­ter 25-30 years on the job and they have not sought to up­date their knowl­edge and skills to make their prac­tices rel­e­vant to the mod­ern era," Roopc­hand said.

He said the min­istry al­so need­ed to de­vel­op a for­mal teach­ers' reg­is­ter which will host all in­for­ma­tion on teach­ers in T&T. He said the idea to in­tro­duce a sys­tem of cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and li­cens­ing has been cir­cu­lat­ing in the min­istry for some time. "Once im­ple­ment­ed, teach­ers' pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment train­ing and per­son­al growth will con­tribute to­ward meet­ing the cri­te­ria for li­cen­sure and re­new­al," he said.