Feyiase (Ash), March 14, GNA - Teachers pursuing distant education in the various tertiary institutions would soon benefit from allowances to help offset some of the cost of their education. Mr Abraham Kwaku Bonsu, Deputy Ashanti Regional Secretary of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), who announced this, said plans were far advanced for the Ghana Education Service (GES) to commence payment of the allowances.

He was addressing the second quadrennial delegates conference of the Bosomtwe-Atwima-Kwanwoma district branch of the GNAT at Feyiase at the weekend.

Mr Bonsu said the move would serve as a motivation to encourage more teachers to upgrade themselves while still teaching, adding that the former blanket study leave system had been regulated as a result of certain abuses by some beneficiaries.

He called on teachers to make inputs to the proposed teacher's insurance scheme, which aims among others, at taking care of complications, which would not be covered in the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

He said the proposed scheme was not to antagonise the NHIS but to supplement it by extending care to cover areas outside the NHIS scope. In an address read for her, Mrs Victoria Annan, Headmistress of the Afua Kobi Ampem Girls' Secondary School at Trabuom, noted that the development of every nation largely depended on its human resources. "Quality education therefore played a key role in national development but no education system can rise above the quality of its teachers who are the pivot on which the education programme rotated", she said.

She therefore urged teachers to take advantage of efforts so far made by the government to enable them to advance academically without abandoning the classrooms.