Handwritten lesson note: Save teachers the stress with a Press Release

Ghana Education News Update – Handwritten lesson note: Save teachers the stress with a Press Release.
Handwritten lesson note is one of the legacies of Ghana’s old-fashioned education policy that needs a modern refinement that makes good use of modern tools, IT, and related equipment to create lesson notes.
The introduction of the new curriculum in 2019 birthed scripted lessons which have survived turbulent challenges from headteachers, SISOs, Circuit Supervisors most of whom are products of the old system.
Digitization of education is here, let us grab it before we are left further behind by the developed countries. Digitization of education includes the conversion of analog or manual processes and operations into digital forms and onto digital platforms to facilitate teaching and learning.
This will make the work of teachers less stressful, more productive and make more time available to the teacher for other commitments in our schools. The scripted lesson plans if adapted and adopted by the GES will lead to the unification of lessons taught across the country every day, and in the long run, the measuring of student and teacher performance can be standardized since the lessons taught is the same in many instances with a dew individual teacher variation.
However, the seemingly entrenched position of heads of schools at the Pre-tertiary level that teachers must continue to write lesson notes with pens and teachers’ lesson notebooks in the digitized age leaves much to be desired. However, they cannot be totally blamed because the GES has not officially stated its position on handwritten lesson plans and scripted lesson plans.
The Vice President, Dr. Bawumia, and the Minister of Education, Dr. Adutwum have spoken on various platforms indicated that teachers will not write lesson plans with pens and teachers’ notebooks again. This declaration was made by the Vice President during the launch of the One Teacher One Laptop Policy in 2021.
However, on the ground in our schools, teachers are still copying lesson notes into lesson notebooks as directed by heads. More worrying is the fact that private schools which should innovate and take advantage of the new scripted lessons are also making their teachers copy the lessons into lesson notebooks.
The Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Ministry of Education (MoE) need to put a stop to making it look as though they have given directives to headteachers not to press home demands for handwritten lesson notes. Making the entire country know via Radio and TV that teachers are not to write lesson plans into notebooks without an official press release does not help anyone in the pretense game. Teachers are pretending to be writing lesson plans by copying scripted lessons, headteachers are marking scripted lessons pretending to be vetting them and the GES is looking on pretending it has approved scripted lesson plans.
The GES needs to do the needful by releasing an official presser stating clearly what is expected of teachers and the head regards lesson plan writing.
Currently, teachers have evolved and made available scripted lesson plans on all portals yet many headteachers are refusing to vet such notes unless these scripted lessons are handwritten all over again. This move by headteachers can be akin to the days when teachers asked learners to copy notes from textbooks into their note three books.
It makes no logical sense to distribute laptops to teachers, announce the cancelation of lesson note writing yet heads are glued to the old way of doing things to save their jobs.
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If teachers must rewrite lesson notes from PDF files into notebooks in this digital age, then Ghana EducationService and the Ministry of Education cannot be said to be digitizing education. The earlier the GES embraces the new normal which has caught up with the modern Ghanaian teacher, the better.
Source: Ghanaeducation,org