Over 9,000 teachers in Delta State have been trained in various skills by the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) as part of the state government’s commitment to boost the quality of education in the state.
Sunny Ogwu, chairman of SUBEB, made the disclosure in Effurun while declaring open a five-day training workshop on ‘The Role of School Support Officers’ programme in the Effective Implementation of School Based Training Model’.
Ogwu said 9,260 participated in the training and assured that SUBEB would continue to give priority attention to its capacity building efforts by intensifying its training and retraining programmes for teachers in the state.
The training was in various skilled areas including Jolly phonics, quality assurance, early child care development education and school-based model, he said.
Other areas, according to Ogwu, include cluster school support mechanism, leadership and management trainings as well as training of over 2,000 head teachers and assistant head teachers on COVID-19 prevention and safety protocol as part of measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic in schools.
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Ogwu, who expressed joy in the commencement of the training, noted that it was the first time the Board was organising the exercise in the newly introduced School Support Officers’ programme aimed at the effective implementation of the school-based model.
He explained that the School Support Officer (SSO) was trained personnel based at the Local Government Education Authority engaged to provide support to head teachers and teachers, adding that the essence to improve school governance and quality of teaching and learning.
“The School Support Officer is expected to develop a respectful and collaborative relationship with the teachers, provide constructive feedback to the teachers, carrying out spot checks of learners’ performance, model good teaching practice, help teachers set goals for what they want to improve, support teachers to meet regularly in professional learning communities and provide guidance on how to solve problems and share ideas,” Ogwu said.
He commended the state governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, for placing high premium on education as evident in his administration’s huge investments in the sector.
The chairman urged participants to take the training very seriously, saying the workshop was designed to improve their capacity to provide critical guidance to head teachers to improve teaching and learning in schools.
Earlier, Juliet Ezefili, director of teacher development, in her welcome address, thanked the board’s members and management as well as UBEC for organising the training and charged participants to reciprocate government’s gesture by applying knowledge learnt from the training in enhancing the quality of education in the state.
Also speaking, Emeka Ihenwokeneme, an official of UBEC from Abuja, assured the Board of UBEC’s continuous collaboration and support improving the standard of education in the state.
