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The Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Prof. Dabire Domwin Kuupole, has urged the Ghana Education Service (GES) to, as a matter of urgency, find ways of absorbing graduates from privately owned Colleges of Education into the service and post them into parts of the country, where there were inadequate qualified teachers.
This, he said would go a long way in helping to improve quality education in the country.

He stated further that there was an urgent need to integrate graduates of private Colleges of Education into the system as a way to encourage and reward the effort of the private colleges.

Prof. Kuupole said this at the maiden congregation of the St. Ambrose College of Education at Dormaa AKwamu in the Dormaa East District in the Brong Ahafo Region last Saturday.

The St. Ambrose College of Education, a privately owned college of education, was established by the Catholic Diocese of Sunyani under the auspices of Most Rev. Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, the Catholic Bishop of Sunyani, in November 2009 to educate and train many highly qualified teachers for the many rural schools that rely on untrained teachers.

The maiden congregation saw a total of 182 pioneering students of the college graduating and were awarded Diploma in Basic Education certificates from the UCC. Eight out of the total number of graduates obtained second class upper, 50 second class lower, 96 third class and 28 passes.

Speaking on the theme for the congregation " Provision of Quality Education in Ghana; A Shared Responsibility"', Prof. Kuupole said the government, school management board, teachers, the clergy, the community and students all have a role to play in ensuring quality education delivery in the country.

He, therefore, charged teacher trainees to eschew negative tendencies such as absenteeism, laziness, alcoholism, drug abuse and care-free attitude that tended to have debilitating effect on quality education in the country.

He noted that government alone could not provide the needed financial and infrastructural resources to give the country the desired results and, therefore, commended the Catholic Diocese of Sunyani for establishing the St. Ambrose College of Education as a means of partnering with the government to provide quality education.

The Catholic Bishop of Sunyani, Most Rev. Gyamfi, expressed regret over the inability of the GES to immediately absorb the graduating students of the college into the service and paid them allowances as was being done to their mates in the public colleges of education.

He gave an assurance that Metropolitan, Municipal and District Directors of Education would soon engage graduates from the college when they present their certificates to them for recruitment to be done in areas in dire need of teachers.

"The Ministry of Education (MOE) tells us there is a shortage of qualified teachers of your kind in the system. If the observation, which they back with figures, is what prevails on the ground, then Regional and District Directors of Education all over the country cannot refuse to engage products of St. Ambrose, who have trained themselves at no expense to the state".

The Principal of the college, Rev. Fr. George Kyeremeh, in his address, also reiterated the call on the GES and the MOE to post students from the college after their training to meet the objective of staffing all basic schools with qualified trained teachers instead of untrained ones.