By Elizabeth Larkwor Baah
Tema, Aug. 22, GNA— Mr. Richard Kovey, the Convenor for the Campaign Against Privatization and Commercialization of Education (CAPCOE), has proposed integrating coding into the curriculum of teacher training institutions to build the capacity of teachers.
Mr. Kovey told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview that this would enable teachers to create engaging lessons and activities and accurately explain coding ideas, to spark the interest of students to prepare for jobs in high demand.
He said the training of the teachers must be done alongside the building of the infrastructure such as ICT labs in the schools, the supply of computers, and the necessary logistics, to ensure that by the time the teachers graduated, they had resources to work with.
He said it was highly commendable for the two main political parties to capture the introduction of coding in their manifesto, adding however that it was exceedingly important that the leaders consider the long-term impact by planning well and putting the right steps in place for the programme to run smoothly in the country.
He further said the infrastructure, tools, and network needed for a serene environment for teaching and learning must be put in place, in addition to revising the curriculum to capture the latest developments to complement the existing traditional method of teaching.
Mr Kovey said there must be short courses available to teachers already in the system to fit into the new trend by mastering their skills, explaining that coding education was vital in the current generation as it could improve problem-solving skills and prepare the students for a digitised future.
He suggested that the introduction to coding must start from the childhood level of education; “even if you cannot start from the early childhood level, it can start from class four.”
He said information technology (ICT) being taught from the basic to the senior high level of education was on the surface, and the current ICT infrastructure in the schools lacks many things.
He stressed that “the Wi-Fi services they introduced in the schools, today none of it is working, and when we’re talking about programming, we need internet to be able to run those programmes. For basic schools, you hardly find a computer laboratory, and the senior high schools have it too. What is the condition as against the student population?”
The CAPCOE Convenor urged that such training should not be politicised, adding that it was about time that the country got a national development plan for all parties to follow in developing the nation.
GNA