Promoting quality education in Ghana. The role of SOS Children’s Villages Ghana
Quality education is a fundamental right of every child irrespective of his/her background; and this is accepted globally.It is therefore important for governments, individuals, institutions and other stakeholders to work together in ensuring that irrespective of societal or family challenges, children are in no way denied such rights.
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Although the concept of quality education is broad, what is necessary is to ensure that some basic frameworks or facilities are put in place in order to facilitate teaching and learning.
Extracts from a paper presented by UNICEF at the meeting of the International Working Group on Education in Florence, Italy- June 2000 partly defines quality education as “Processes through which trained teachers use child-centred teaching approaches in well-managed classrooms and schools and skilful assessment to facilitate learning and reduce disparities”.
Ghana’s commitment to the SDGs
Ghana is part of the UN Member States that adopted and pledged to work towards the achievement of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These seventeen (17) global goals represent the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
While limiting this article to the scope of Quality Education, it will focus on SDG 4 which seeks to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”; and SDG 10, which seeks to “reduce inequality within and among countries.”
With an estimated population of 27 million Ghanaians, it is practically impossible for government to act as an independent body in implementing these goals without assistance from or collaboration with relevant stakeholders.
A reliable option is to partner with state agencies, private institutions and non-governmental child welfare organisations towards the common agenda of bridging the gap between the less privileged child and quality education.
Poverty, family or other forms or factors of societal breakdowns are an unjustifiable reason to deny a vulnerable Ghanaian child his/her right to attain quality education.
Complementing government efforts
SOS Children’s Villages Ghana is a social development organisation with specific interest in child welfare and protection. The organisation runs two programmes, namely the Family Based Care,for children who have lost parental care, and the Family Strengthening Programme (FSP), for children who stand the risk of losing parental care.
As part of its commitment to complement government efforts towards the achievement of the SDGs and in line with its community intervention schemes under the FSP, the NGO has embarked on an educational project to promote quality education for less-privileged children in society.
This educational project has been dubbed: “Quality Education Now (QEN)” and is expected to, among other things, reach out to about 45,000 pupils (Primary and JHS) in at least 20 schools.
As of 2015, the project had reached out to about 20,000 beneficiaries who include its target population of 12,000 pupils (primary and JHS) in at least twenty (20) schools in various districts.
This was in partnership with the Ghana Education Service and sought to, among other things, advocate for the promotion of sustainable quality education while sensitising community members to their role in facilitating sustainable educational practices.
The project seeks to rectify challenges identified from community researches conducted by the NGO, some of which are inadequate funding of some basic education by government, inadequate monitoring and supervision by school heads, poor management of available funds, dysfunctional school management committees, inadequate training of teachers.
The QEN project is operated in two main areas; the policy makers or management level and the community level.
At the management level, SOS seeks to beckon on policy makers to increase support for community-based schools by empowering existing structures through monitoring, training, management and supervision; in order to ensure sustainable quality education delivery at school, community and district levels.
This is aimed at increasing resources to the various schools in the communities.
At the community level, the QEN project is aimed at empowering community members to be actively engaged in the planning and functioning of the various schools within their communities, some of which include attending School Management Committee (SMC) meetings and PTA meetings.
Stakeholder engagement
By employing pragmatic measures to curb various obstacles that hinder vulnerable children from accessing quality education even at the public school level, this project will engage the services of School Management Committees, Community Based Organisations, Parent Teacher Associations and District, Municipal and Metropolitan Education Office, District Education Oversight Committee and the Municipal Education Oversight Committee among other bodies.
Forms of school empowerment programmes entails series of vigorous capacity building for relevant stakeholders to be involved in strict school management and monitoring.
Targeted districts include Ashaiman Municipality, Kpone Katamanso District, Ningo Prampram District and Accra Metropolitan Assembly (precisely Chorkor).
The rest are East Akim Municipality, Fanteakwa District in the Eastern Region and Asokore Mampong Municipality in the Ashanti Region.
Some forms of support given to target communities include renovation of school toilets and urinals, donation of dustbins and educational materials, renovation of school canteens, payment of school fees and PTA levies for needy children and training for teachers and other stakeholders related to the education sector.
Parents have also undergone parental and guidance counselling, skills or entrepreneurial training, financial management for their businesses and other forms of direct support to facilitate the educational needs of vulnerable children.
Our future leaders deserve better
As a developing country, our success as a nation partly depends on the state’s consistent commitment towards addressing the plight of children and young people in general. This determines the breed of future leaders we produce to handle affairs of the nation.
This act of obligation goes a long way to strengthen our social development policies and also put our country ahead in terms of child welfare and protection; a prerequisite for human capital development.
In Ghana, more often than not, vulnerable children are denied their right to quality education even at the elementary stages of their lives. They are made to contend with poor educational systems especially at the basic public school level.They are made victims to a repetitive oversight of improper educational frameworks with minimal or no supervision to hold stakeholders accountable to their task.
The debate of whose responsibility it is to avert this infringement emerges when we all fail to acknowledge that it is indeed a shared responsibility for all stakeholders.
This community intervention spearheaded by SOS seeks to ensure that the high numbers of orphans and vulnerable children are given improved and sustainable educational system for them to have the opportunity to develop their intellectual and individual capacities.
This is a prerequisite to cushion the youth development by enhancing the intellectual growth and participation of young people; to promote innovation and enable them to contribute effectively to society’s development.
Let us remind ourselves of the fact that Quality Education still remains a “Right” and not a “Privilege”.
The time to create an enabling environment to support equal access to quality basic education for every Ghana