The Bhutanese Leading the way.
The Ministry of Education (MoE) based on a survey found out that 55% of teachers are not satisfied with the profession of teaching, which the MoE Minister Lyonpo Norbu Wangchuk said is a great concern for the government as well as for the people and society.“Teachers are the ones who prepare our future generations” he pointed out.
After finding out the result, Lyonpo said that it was discussed and planned that at least 70% of the teacher are to be provided gratification in their profession.
Lyonpo pointed out, it should be actually 100% but because the situation is little challenging 70% would be a reasonable target within one year.
To achieve this many plans are in pipeline especially concentrated on the professional skills development for the teachers.
Lyonpo said, after his taking up as of the position as education minister two months ago, the Prime Minister has offered a challenge in two forms. One is to increase the level of competency for the teachers by providing various trainings and programs and the other is to develop motivation and commitment for the teachers.
Lyonpo said that while talking about the good education, there are three main pillars which are infrastructure, curriculum and teacher out of which he said that teacher is the most important pillar.He pointed out, “Poor infrastructure and bad curriculum cannot substitute a teacher but a good teacher can substitute poor infrastructure and bad curriculum” adding that this is the reason for 2016 to be observed as a year of professional development of teaching.
After a research it was found out that the old pedagogy has been used for strategy approach for teaching. He said, most of the teachers are working for decades but they didn’t even get a single opportunity for training which is the reason why most of the teachers are found using the old way of teaching which will impact students.
Lyonpo said that each and every teacher who numbers up to 9000, will be provided training on modern pedagogy. Lyonpo said that the previous Nu 8 million training budget has now increased to 117 million after discussions with the Ministry of Finance (MoF). “This amount would be enough to fulfill the plans,” he added.
The main plan in is also to provide a Master’s Degree to each and every teacher. He said that hopefully after examining and studying the issue, the plan will be implemented from 2017.
Based on that, Lyonpo said that during the last National Assembly session, it was announced by the PM that 73 acres of land in Youngphula is to be built as a Masters Degree institution for the teachers for English and related subjects.
And similarly the existing colleges in Samtse and Paro Colleges of Education are to be upgraded to Center of Excellences for Science and Math respectively.
