Cape Coast, July 17, GNA - Reverend Professor Emmanuel Adow Obeng, Vice- Chancellor of University of Cape Coast (UCC) on Thursday reiterated that teacher education played a critical role to achieve the developmental goals of every nation. He observed that in South-Saharan Africa in particular, teacher education had become critical to achieve global agreements, such as the Education for All (EFA) Goals, Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Rev. Prof Obeng, made the observation when opening a two-day International Conference on Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) on the theme "Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Issues, Prospects and Challenges" at Cape Coast.

The conference organized by the Faculty of Education of UCC is being attended by participants from Nigeria, Ghana, Zambia and Lesotho including teachers and lecturers from universities and teacher training institutions. Rev. Prof. Obeng noted that there were more illiterates in Sub-Saharan Africa than in other regions of the world, and a 2007 EFA report by UNESCO indicted that in 2005, the region had the lowest literacy rate of 59 per cent among adults and 69 per cent among the youths. He emphasized that this was a major challenge to African Governments to meet the learning needs of the many illiterate youth and adults in the region.

Rev. Prof Obeng said the challenges faced in teacher education, required the "supply of millions of new teachers and the upgrading of millions of teachers who are unqualified or under-qualified," adding that although teaching staff in primary schools in the region increased from about one million in 1995 to 2.5 million in 2005, this was still low, compared to its urgent needs. He mentioned the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic as another compounding factor of the low teacher supply, and available statistics indicated that 860,000 children in the region lost their teachers to the disease and cited Kenya as one of the most affected countries.

Rev. Prof Obeng noted that several countries faced serious constraints in addressing the crisis-level teacher shortage in the schools and were unable to allocate sufficient funds for expansion of teacher training institutions comparable with the pace of school expansion in order to provide matching workforce in schools to cope with the challenges of insufficient teachers. He said some initiatives evolved to improve teacher education in the region were, Teacher Training Initiative for Sub-Saharan Africa (TISSA) and Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA).

Rev. Prof Obeng said the region needed a large number of well trained teachers to transform the present state of education and pointed out that this could not be achieved at the rate needed, "through the 'brick-and mortar' campus-based training system". He said the emergence of affordable communication technologies provided a more efficient way of training teachers through the "brick-and-click system". Professor Joseph Aboagye, who presided, appealed to teacher training institutions to stop admitting people who did not have the required entry grades or qualification, to help discard the notion that "teaching was the last resort if all opportunities failed". He suggested that the entry requirements for such institutions should be reviewed to prevent the production of poor quality teachers.