All You Need to Know about Teachers’ Professional Development Allowance

Ferdinand|EducationGhana| June 23| All You Need to Know about Teachers’ Professional Development Allowance

Explanation of TEACHERS’ PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ALLOWANCE

The President mentioned it briefly in his STATE OF THE NATION address without explanation. Yesterday, the Education Minister also re-echoed it during his press briefing and added a little flesh. But there are still dozens of questions to be answered.

Follow me and let’s use our common sense to find answers to some of the questions whiles we wait for them to come clear on the rest.

1. Who is a PROFESSIONAL? Being a professional means, working and behaving in such a way that others think of you as competent, reliable, and respectful.

2. What is a PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT? Personal and Professional development is the process through which the organization and individual engage in the process of learning to meet the challenges and desired goals.

3. What is an ALLOWANCE? An allowance is an amount of money given or allotted to an employee usually at regular intervals for a specific purpose.(In this case professional development)

4. What is a PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT ALLOWANCE? PDA is reimbursement of an expenditure or payment of financial assistance (as in the case of advance payment) to an employee who has been employed in the Professional stream for the specified qualifying period, to offset professional development costs.

1. Why the NEED for professional development? The purpose of professional development is to improve knowledge and skills in order to facilitate individual, school-wide, and district-wide improvements for the purpose of increasing student achievement.
2. What WARRANTS the PAYMENT of professional development allowance to teachers?

I. Newly arrived CONDITION OF SERVICE.

II. TEACHERS LICENSE and it’s renewal terms and conditions. You have to build points by attending workshops, seminars any other professional development courses to build point to be able to renew your license.

III. The introduction of the NEW STANDARDS-BASED CURRICULUM. This also gave birth a new normal known as PLC and CPDD. Professional learning communities where teacher meets one hour once every week to share ideas.

Continuous Professional development day where learners stay at home and teachers go to school and use the whole day to share ideas regarding their profession and how to improve upon it.

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7. What is the ESSENCE OF THE ALLOWANCE?
I. The Allowance is to motivate teachers to take part in professional development. PLCs, CPDDs, INSET, etc

II. The allowance is also to pay in advance or offset the cost teachers would incur in attending paid workshops. Circuits may organize, Districts may organize, NGOs may organize, A branch under NTC known as Continuous Professionalism Development Providers may also organize. Some would be free, some would not.

This also implies that, when this allowance starts coming, no teacher would have an excuse to give for not attending a workshop for a certain stipulated period.

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1. Would IN-SERVICE TEACHERS who do not have a license also receive the allowance?

NTC, GES and MOE are in talks with teacher unions and other relevant stakeholders to arrive at a common ground on how to license in-service teachers. When that is done, it will be duly communicated.

I hope, you know the amount already. Gh1200 AND Gh600. As for when it will start hitting the account and the mode of payment, it’s yet to be disclosed. Whether it would e paid in a chunk at the end of the year or it would be divided and paid on a monthly bases, we are yet to find out.

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