Increase budget for early childhood education — World Vision
The National Director of World Vision Ghana, Mr Hubert Charles, has urged the government to increase budgetary allocation for early childhood education to promote access and quality.
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He said this would strengthen the infrastructure and human resource base at that level of education and ensure that interventions such as the School Feeding Programme became well structured.
In a speech read on his behalf to commemorate this year's African Union Day of the African Child at Ejura in the Ashanti Region, he made reference to the 2010 Population and Housing Census report that showed that more than seven million children were out of school, describing it as troubling.
About four million of these children were in the rural communities.
Mr Charles expressed concern about the substantial number of children who travelled long distances to school, citing the findings of a baseline survey undertaken by his organisation in the region last year which revealed that 25 per cent of the children made a round trip of between two and five kilometres to school daily.
He said the implication was that many in the hard-to-reach rural communities who were unable to cover long distances might end up dropping out of school.
He called for intensive efforts to eliminate schools under trees, as well as sustain efforts to enhance the distribution of free school uniforms and exercise books, sustenance of the capitation grant and the Untrained Teachers Diploma in Basic Education Programme.
The Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipal Chief Executive, Alhaji Mohammed Braimah Bawa, underscored the need for stakeholders to work together to protect children’s rights.
The day is celebrated annually to commemorate the massacre of schoolchildren in Soweto, South Africa in 1976 as they were protesting an education system designed under the apartheid regime.
The brutal response of the apartheid security agencies to the unarmed students resulted in the death of many of them.
