The dilemma on the policy of classroom teacher as against subject teachers, teaching in primary schools in Ghana: the way forward for physical education as a core subject

Abstract

Teachers who are employed to teach in the basic schools in Ghana, either ply their trade in the primary schools or the junior high schools (JHS). The primary classes comprise of classes 1-6, and the junior high schools are made up of JHS 1-3. The primary school teachers are termed as “classroom teachers”, because a teacher is allotted a particular class and he or she is responsible for teaching all the subjects on the time table to the pupils throughout the duration the class is assigned to that teacher. In the case of JHS teachers, they are termed subject teachers because they don’t have permanent classes they stick to throughout the year, but rather move from class to class, teaching their specialized subjects to various classes and levels in the school. The writer’s concern in this paper is whether pupils in the primary schools are better off with the classroom teacher policy, or assigning them with subject teachers will be an improvement on the current policy of the Ghana Education Service. Considering the kind of training student-teachers receive during their formation periods in the Colleges of Education, are they better off with the current policy, or will be better off with the subject teaching option. Dose the curricula of Physical Education in particular and other core subjects in general in their present form at the colleges of education, favour the classroom arrangement over the subject teacher option after completion of the training of the newly trained teacher? The advantages and disadvantages of the two polices is discussed in this paper.. The way forward on the issue under discussion so far as Physical Education as a subject is concerned is also assessed in this paper. The interdisciplinary approach of learning is also discussed as one of the ways forward in addressing the classroom/subject teacher dilemma.