9.4 Cost Effectiveness of Teacher Training

The issue of cost effectiveness needs to be addressed at NTTC. The initial investment required for providing residential places to students in full-time pre-service courses is very high, in addition to high operating costs. Also, lack of accommodation makes it difficult to expand enrolment. Other alternatives have been suggested, such as expanding the in-service programme, or running two cohorts concurrently in pre-service with alternating teaching practice and on-campus teaching. At present, facilities remain unused for half a year while students are out on teaching practice. If teaching practice were to be extended to one year (as used to happen during the early days of the college) then another group of students could be admitted during that period. This would effectively double the output of NTTC without additional infrastructure costs.

A further area of concern is secondary training. At present, secondary students make up only 25% of the student body, but have more than 50% of the staff devoted to them in the NTTC. Some subject areas have so few students that they could be considered unviable and there is a clear need for a rationalization of secondary training. It has been suggested that all secondary training be undertaken at the university to free NTTC to concentrate upon producing a larger number of well-qualified primary teachers. Presently NTTC is involved in workshops for the review of the secondary curriculum.