Institute of Education at the University of Cape Coast (UCC) in the Central region has held its fifth excellence awards for Colleges of Education in Ghana to encourage and motivate student-teachers to take their academic work serious.

The event, which was on the theme; “Quality teacher education: Tonic for excellent teacher performance in basic schools,” had 11 graduates selected from five zones namely Greater Accra/Eastern, Volta, Ashanti/Brong Ahafo, Central/Western and Northern Zones emerging as winners.

Speaking at the function, Director of the Institute of Education at UCC, Prof. Frederick Ocansey, explained that two students with the highest grades were selected in each zone, adding that the student with the highest grade amongst ten selected students will be crowned as the national best graduating student.

He explained further that students’ performance in the past had not been encouraging since there were no First Class being recorded hence the initiative by his outfit to encourage students to put in their best.

He pointed out that since the teacher training programme at the colleges of education was scaled up from certificate to diploma level, the academic performance of students has improved significantly over the years.

Prof. Ocansey added that since the award ceremony was instituted five years ago, the performance of students has been remarkable and encouraging with six students from 38 public and private colleges of education in the country attaining first class during the first awards in 2010.

“The 2011 year group produced 23 first class results with 22 first classes in 2012. In 2013 we had 20 and 60 in 2014 as well as 133 in 2015,” he disclosed.

The director of the institute expressed hope that the students would continue to exhibit excellent academic performance to be able to effectively contribute to nation building.

For his part, Vice Chancellor of the university, Prof. Domwini Dabire Kuupole, stated that since teachers serve as role models and are regarded as the repository of knowledge and good behaviour, the aim of the awards is to enable such good character formation to trickle down to the pupils and students they teach and eventually permeate the wider society.

He disclosed that in selecting the winners, the awards committee took into consideration their excellent academic performance, character, social standing, positions held in their respective colleges and any other outstanding achievements.

He thus appealed to the Ghana Education Service (GES) to assist UCC and the award winners by granting them study leave with pay for them to pursue higher education at the university.

The Director-General of GES, Mr. Jacob Kor, who was the guest speaker for the award ceremony, described UCC as the best university when it comes to teacher education in the country, and commended them for setting the pace with the awards which he described as the first of its kind in teacher education in Ghana.

He observed that the awards will not only shape lives of the teacher trainees but will have a trickledown effect on the students and pupils who will be handled by the teachers.

He charged managers of the awards to widen their net to cover teachers from the five private absorbed colleges of education in the country instead of limiting it to the public zones.

Mr. Kor implored graduate teachers not to look down on rural people and accept postings to rural areas as they need their services most.

He therefore, pledged his outfit’s support to continue to put in place the necessary policies and interventions to ensure that the right environment for quality teaching and learning is created in schools at all levels.

A graduating student from the Accra College of Education, Mr. Benjamin Amo, was crowned the National Best Excellence Award Winner for the 2014/2015 academic year and was given a laptop, printer, citation and a cash prize of GH?1,000.

The other ten winners each received a citation, laptop and GH?750 with all the winners getting scholarship to pursue a post diploma in basic education at UCC.