Latest update January 6th, 2025 4:00 AM
Training teachers costing taxpayers – NCERD Director
– tutors urged to make full use of instruction
Providing professional support to the education system mainly through the training of teachers is a key
NCERD Director, Ms. Jennifer Cumberbatch
role of the National Centre for Education Resource Development (NCERD). This undertaking is a regular feature and is by no means a menial one, as it serves to improve the various aspects of education delivery.
Essentially, NCERD is a training and development arm of the Ministry of Education.
Director of NCERD, Ms. Jennifer Cumberbatch, recently shared with this publication that training of teachers is a rather costly operation. In fact she revealed that hosting a single training workshop for teachers could cost in excess of $0.5 million.
“Whenever we bring teachers together we have to give them a meal or so, and it could be very costly. When I came here first I was shocked at the cost just to do one workshop,” reflected Cumberbatch, who assumed the portfolio of Director in October of 2012.
For this reason she said that “I implore teachers to ensure that they really take in the training that they are given, because it’s really costing the taxpayers and we want to see value for money.”
But support is sometimes forthcoming from outside sources. Just recently NCERD was able to benefit from funding from the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) which is financed mainly by the Caribbean Development Bank.
The recent BNTF support allowed NCERD to cater to a week-long training for teachers who, according to Cumberbatch, have to deal with children who are weak, brilliant or even those with other problems. According to her, “As we move towards having quality education we really need to have our teachers well trained so that they can teach all kinds of children, and that they are exposed to as many different methodology as we can expose them to.”
And ensuring that teachers across the country are properly equipped for the teaching task they are confronted with, continued training, even after leaving Teaching College, is an essential feature. This, according to Cumberbatch, is designed to ensure that “We can’t leave anybody out. When it comes to teaching our children we have to ensure that everybody is captured in that net.”
It is for this reason, she added, that NCERD has been working along with the Ministry to make sure that children are in school. Efforts in this regard are being boosted by President David Granger’s Three Bs initiative which is intended to ensure that school-age children have access to transportation to take them to school.
“We are in Georgetown but we don’t know what is going on in some other areas. There are some children who are not going to school because their parents don’t have money for transportation and some don’t go to school because of lack of meals …that is why for years we have been giving children a snack, in some areas a hot meal, and that has really helped with the attendance of our children to school,” Cumberbatch informed.
But getting the children back into school is only part of the intended objective.
“Having gotten them into school we have to look at the quality education we provide. There are some teachers who are not equipped to teach some children such as those who are differently able,” Cumberbatch asserted. And being differently able, she added, may not always be linked to a visible physical challenge.
“Some children may be differently able where their minds are concerned, as they may not be as quick in grasping what is taught as some of their classmates do,” Cumberbatch pointed out. As such she noted that “when we have workshops it is to ensure that quality education is equal for all.”
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