-By Yusufu S. Bangura
National Council for Civic Education and Development (NaCCED) in collaboration with Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary School Education (MBSSE), Teaching Service Commission (TSC) and the Sierra Leone Free Education Project (SL-FEP), has concluded a two-day national civic training for teachers in the Western Urban.
The training which took place at Skye Street in Freetown on Saturday 19th November 2022, was geared towards educating teachers on civic education so that they can transfer it to pupils.
Giving brief background about the institution, Regional Coordinator for NaCCED, Hilary M. John said NaCCED is a national institution committed to deepening democracy and good governance, promoting national cohesion and sustainable development through civic education and development communication.
She added that they optimised the use of civic education in strengthening democracy, improve governance and sustainable development in Sierra Leone.
NaCCED Regional Coordinator said she wanted the teachers that have been trained to go out and train other teachers including pupils who were not part of the training, and that they count on teachers to be ambassadors.
She said the institution started operations in 2018 when President Bio made a pronouncement that civics should come back into the school curriculum because some of them who went through that system helps shape their characters, but nowadays children did not have respect for elders, parents and even their colleagues,
She concluded that they have printed the books and distributed to teachers which they would use to teach pupils, adding that they were expecting to see a positive behaviour in children and adults by respecting their elders after the training.
Julius Fisher, one of the writers of the civic books, said the engagement of teachers would be a continuation of a series of trainings organised for teachers at both primary and secondary schools on civic education.
He said the idea was born out of the fact that when the curriculum was developed it became a need for teachers to be trained because they cannot send the civic books to schools without them having understanding of what they were doing, so they wanted to address those problem by training teachers for them to be in a better position to teach the pupils.
He continued that they trained over 100 teachers coming from different schools, and added that the message behind the training was to equip teachers with the skills, knowledge and attitude they need to have about civic education and for them to impart that knowledge to the pupils.
“The pedagogy is our concern because if we did not get the pedagogy right, whatever we do in terms of the nature of the text books and syllabus it would be meaningless, so we are here helping teachers to get the skills they need to transfer information to the children because pedagogy is critical for any curriculum to succeed,” he said.
Fisher said they would be expecting teachers to go back to their schools and start helping the children and pleaded with them to try develop positive attitude towards civic education, inculcate the discipline in children for them to be active listeners and participants in learning civic so that they too can transform sierra Leone.
He said without civic education, they would not be making headway and civic education would create positive impact on the behaviour of pupils including people in the society.
One of the teachers present during the training, Paul Abass Kamara, said based on the subject, he hope to learn something that he would take back to his school that would help change the attitude and behavior of children.
