Ministry of Education established a new Professional Development Unit ^Featured

Its establishment is an embodiment of the Ministry’s strategic effort to enhance its workforce’s professional and attitudinal capabilities as an impetus towards attaining its goals, organizational and national mandates.

Highly competent and professional members of the PD Unit deliver appropriate and relevant curriculum to teachers in all levels of schooling, with the expectations that better learning outcomes can be achieved by students.

The Unit produces a range of professional development programs to further enhance teaching skills and practices and thereby elevate teaching standards and expectations.

The Unit’s objectives are to:

1. Ensure structural and professional development elements are built for effective ongoing staff development and support.

2. Strategically plan and implement staff development activities to address teaching and learning issues in different contexts.

3. Review the unit’s professional development programs on a bi-annual basis.

4. Identify and strategically plan professional development programs that are effectively delivered to achieve and align to local, regional and international codes of teaching standards.

In January - March 2020, the PD team conducted two rounds of workshops in 13 centres; 11 in Tongatapu and 2 in ‘Eua.

The team will soon travel to the outer islands to deliver the same workshops.

At the end of each workshop, both oral and written feedback are recorded for further analysis to inform better and more relevant content are delivered in future workshops.

One of the Ministry’s 10 Educational Regulations, the Teachers’ Registration Regulation was recently approved by Cabinet, so all teachers are required to be registered, starting next year.

The PD Unit is tasked to undertake this role.

The Ministry in its vision to achieve excellence in education believes that having well-trained and resourceful teachers are crucial to obtaining better learning outcomes for our students.