Double track in Colleges of Education, a bad influence for teacher trainees-A trainee writes.
A teacher trainee from St.Teresa’s College of Education(Teresco), Dora Esinam Avornyo has written to express worry as to why she thinks double track system in the Colleges of Education is a bad influence for teachers trainees.
According to Her, the swap from the old system to the current system, which is a double track system in the COE may breed poor grades which will render teacher trainees incomplete to man the teaching fraternity.
In a lengthy article sitting strong reasons why the double-track system won’t favor teacher trainees, her article reads:
Before the implementation of the novel 4-year B.ed program in 2018, the 46 Colleges of Education in Ghana were running a 3-year Diploma in Basic Education Program which saw only two-year batches on campus for one year of teaching practice.
However, after the swap, stakeholders have no option than to devise a means for combating the infrastructural challenges created as a result. Where are dormitories, lecture halls classrooms to contain more than the two-year batches the colleges used to hold at a time?
This the implementation of the double-track system for Colleges of Education in the country in 2020 when fresh students were admitted into Colleges.
Meanwhile, before this, colleges have experienced a long covid-19 break if stay in the house since the Covid-19 came, just about when vacations were supposed to end, this, extending it for more months.
That means a break in learning for some students. just trying to recover from the loss, we had no option but to run a double-track system with online tuitions.
Below are some of the reasons why I think the double track is a bad influence for teacher trainees.
To begin with, the Ghanaian teacher trainees are to use the traditional teaching and learning, that takes place in a classroom with a face to face contact.
The online tuition and learning met trainees unprepared with most of them having little knowledge about things digitally.
To dive more into issues, some trainees who struggled and broke through the digital divide, are left to face the problems of poor network, expensive data charges, and inability to access good and appropriate devices to hold.
Finally, the double-track system, causing an increase in the number of days of stay at home, has seen a lot of female trainees getting pregnant as compared to before.
That affects the quality of their academic performance in their educational goal.
In conclusion, these bottlenecks; the challenges of online tuition, the compromise on the quality of education, the reduction in the quality of delivery among others, themselves, suggest, undoubtedly that the double-track system for colleges of Education is such a bad influence for teacher trainees.
