Adequate resources for educational sector is best way in addressing education problems-NNED

A leading educational nongovernmental organization in the three northern regions — Northern, Upper East and Upper West — has stated that the number of years a child spends in school is immaterial.

The NGO, the Northern Network for Education Development (NNED) emphasized that what was important was making available adequate and necessary resources to schools to provide quality education.

NNED wondered why the Ghanaian government allocation of about 6% of the national budget for the education sector, still has not made the desired impact as the sector continues to grapple with a lot of challenges culminating in poor performance in some instances.

The NPP government under former president Kufour opted for four years arguing that it was better for the Ghanaian child. Under the NDC, however, the the four year system was revised to three years with the firm belief that the years in school don’t matter but rather putting in place measures and infrastructure to ensure quality.

Answering questions from journalists on the NNED’s position on the matter at a day’s meeting with the media, Mr Gaskin Dassah, the network coordinator said even after change of government, there are still discussions and calls for a national dialogue to bring finality to the issue.

The meeting was to up date the activities of NNED and its collaborators in assisting government’s effort in the educational sector and also encourage the commitment of media practitioners to address problems confronting the sector.

On the scraping of the teacher trainee allowance, Mr. Dassah said the network sanctioned the scraping allowance because the arument was that the colleges needed to take more students and will train more teachers to fill empty class rooms.

The organization while supporting the scraping of the allowance suggested to the government to guarantee the security of the teacher trainee’s job. On poor performance of BECE in public schools in the region, Mr. Dassah attributed the problem to poor supervision.”There is a bit of laxity as far as teacher supervision is concern,” he said.

Mr. Dassah said the efforts of his organization and other education advocates compelled the government to signing on to the language policy as well as the Complementary Basic Education ( CBE ) policy and also to increase the capitation grant in 186 school communities in 18 districts to 50% in public basic schools.

The network urged government to increase capitation grant especially in rural schools because the grant seems to benefiting urban schools than rural schools which has low enrollment level.

Head of Programs at NNED, Mr. Abukari Ayuba expressed worry about a new trend in education sector where teachers will go to school but decide to sit under trees conversing.

Mr. Ayuba added that while teacher absenteeism has been minimized, the troubling trend in schools is the scene of teachers idling about under trees, thereby cutting short the contact hours between them and their pupils. This, phenomenon he observed, if not checked could have a negative impact on the educational sector.

Mr Ayuba explained that the network’s work in most districts indicated that some teachers who still commute from Tamale to some communities in the Savelugu/ Nanton municipality become exhausted thus reducing contact hours between them and their pupils.

The network Mr Ayuba is empowering the community members take their children destiny into their own hands by monitoring the activities of teachers.