Almost every sector of the Ministry of Education has a part to play in developing competent, committed and professional teachers, says the deputy secretary of the Ministry James Bosamata.
Speaking on the theme “Teacher Professional Learning Development and Scholarship opportunities,” yesterday he highlighted the importance of working together to achieve competent, committed and professional teachers.
He said, education authorities and training providers such as SINU and USP also has an important role to play to achieve the theme of the conference.
“I want to emphasise that what I am talking about here is not just, teacher training development division work, rather almost every sector and department of MEHRD has a part to play in developing competent, committed and professional teachers,” he said.
He said, the teacher training development division’s job is to develop the vision, get people’s agreement to the best way to achieve that vision and then coordinate and facilitate its implementation.
“Every teacher goes through a journey with their own experience of school for instance through early childhood education, primary, junior secondary and up to sixth form.
“Then they should go into some form of training either as teachers, or in some specialists subjects are before they train as teachers,” he said.
He said in the case of Solomon Islands many teachers have not had this training where he clearly stated that teachers without training should get a professional qualification or else leave the service.
He also pointed out that in Solomon Islands like most other education systems; “we focused on the initial training of teachers.
“Every year we spend big portion of our budget sending school leavers to SINU and elsewhere to learn how to teach”, he said.
Mr. Bosamata’s presentation yesterday was an eye opener for the participants in which questions were answered during in his presentation.
The conference will continue again today at the Mendana Hotel and will end with an official closing at 6:30pm.
By Biriau Wilson Saeni
