They also have an important role to play in providing institutional leadership, strengthening good governance, ensuring quality of education, bringing innovation in the curriculum, expanding international cooperation and establishing effective linkages between universities and society. Therefore, it is the need of the hour to establish a sustainable national teacher development system to ensure academic leadership, teaching excellence, research, innovation and quality in the higher education sector, a press release said.
He further said that this program is not just a professional development training; rather, it is part of a larger initiative to increase institutional capacity in the higher education sector of Bangladesh and establish a sustainable framework for academic leadership development. One of the goals of this initiative is to transform the country’s universities into more effective, accountable and international standard institutions by developing skilled human resources.
Professor Dr. Abdullah Al-Mamun said that although comparatively more importance was given to infrastructure development in the higher education sector in the past, the current government is prioritizing the development of a skill-based education system. To implement that goal, various types of soft skills and professional skills development training are being provided to university teachers under the Higher Education Acceleration and Transformation (HEAT) project under the supervision of UGC. He called on all concerned to ensure proper and transparent use of the project funds.
Among others, the program was addressed by University Teachers’ Training Academy (UTTA) Dean Professor Dr. Laila Noor Islam, British Council Bangladesh Deputy Director Miss Maria Rahman and Advance HE Lead Consultant Professor Ben Brabon.
Following the success of producing 20 Master Trainers in the first phase, 20 National Trainers selected from various universities in the country are participating in the second phase of Training of Trainers (ToT-2) program.
It is to be noted that under the HEAT project being implemented with the support of the World Bank, 1500 new teachers and 3500 senior teachers from various public and private universities of the country will be trained in the next three years.
