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Teacher education in Jaffna revived

After a long lapse teacher education in Jaffna was recently revived by the National Authority on Teacher Education (NATE) of the Ministry of Human Resources Development, Education & Cultural Affairs. The complete absence of in-service training of teachers in schools and teacher education of the staff in teacher education institutions in the past 20 years have had tremendous impact on teaching and more particularly on the achievement levels of students in schools.

The Education Reforms introduced in 1996 and the new curricular introduced as a result were severely handicapped due to the total lack of training programs. On the other hand, the constraint on the teacher trainers was the lack of adequate knowledge and understanding of the new textbooks and the new methodology recommended in using those textbooks.

In order to remedy this situation, NATE made use of the present tension free atmosphere of the peninsula and the changed attitudes of those in educational administration to revive the teacher education program implementing a 4 tiered program of activities. NATE under the guidance and direction of its Director General, Mr. Nihal Cooray, a 4-day intensive programme was launched under the 100 day programme, from 5 - 8 March for the staff in the College of Education, Teachers' College Jaffna, Zonal Directors of Education, Directors of Education, Deputy Directors of Education (Education Development) and Senior In-service Advisors.

The second phase would be to prepare 2 programmes for teacher trainers for primary and post primary grades. The third would be to implement a school based teacher training programme using the services of two groups of trainers. The fourth would be to orientale all Educational Administrators more importantly the Zonal Directors of Education on the approaches to be used in school supervision programs in their respective zones. The DDE (Ed.Dev.) would be detailed to identify ineffective, and inefficient teachers through supervision programs and provide them with special continuing teacher education through Teacher Centres and Regional English Support Centres.

The programme was organized and worked out under the direction of Dr. T. Kamalanathan, the President of the National College of Education and his Deputy Mr. P. Thanapalan. They expressed their deep appreciation of the initiative taken by the National Authority on Teacher Education (NATE) for the benefit of all the key personnel of the educational sector in Jaffna District. The Zonal Director of Education, invited the staff of NATE to develop the program further so that teachers would get the benefit of acquiring the recently developed classroom methodologies, Evaluation and management of Teacher Education and the new policy decision made in the National Teacher Education Policy document recently published by NATE.

On the final day the participants made an evaluation of the workshop program. They expressed satisfaction that their knowledge and understanding were renewed and updated after nearly twenty years. The new recruits to the profession were overwhelmed by the new experience they gained. Both educational administrators and teacher educators requested the National Authority on Teacher Education to conduct more and more workshops for teachers and principals. The staff of NATE also took time off to meet the MEd students of the University of Jaffna on a request made by the Dean of Graduate Studies of the University.

The training staff of NATE included Ranjith Ramanayake, Dr. N. Dharmakeerthi and Mr. U. Navaratnam.

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Copyright 2001 The Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd.
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