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Parliamentary Select Committee commended for helping to end POTAG strike

The Minister of Education, Professor Naana Jane Opoku-Agyeman, has expressed her gratitude to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education, for helping to find an amicable solution to the recent strike by the Polytechnic Teachers Association of Ghana (POTAG).

According to her, the ministry, apart from benefiting from the immense role the committee played through its comments and observations by members, had also recognised their monitoring of some ongoing projects, targets the ministry set for the year, and the progress it had made.

"We are happy that during the monitoring, the committee has come to appreciate the key challenges confronting the sector and it is our expectation that you will bring additional input to help the ministry’s programme to overcome the challenges", she added.

Performance review

Prof. Opoku-Agyeman gave the commendation at a five-day performance review workshop organised by the committee in Koforidua.

Presenting an overview of the ministry's programme for the year, progress made and key challenges, she said for the year, the ministry aimed at covering areas such as the improvement of management efficiency; equitable access to and participation in education and training; quality of teaching and learning outcomes, especially in languages; mathematics and science.

She also announced that as part of the government's support, 10,942 basic schools in 75 deprived districts had been provided with teaching and learning materials while take-home rations had been given to 10,000 girls in the three northern regions.

In addition to this, 148,000 pupils in basic schools in the three northern regions had also benefited from the school feeding programme.

Challenges

Touching on the challenges, Prof. Opoku-Agyeman identified the slow pace of rehabilitation of school facilities due to inadequate funding, non-availability of schools to train some students who had completed basic education and low performance of students in English, Mathematics and Science.

The rest are the slow teacher-rationalisation programme; high teacher absenteeism rate despite efforts to curb it; weak management structures and inadequate funds that are released late.

She gave the assurance that the ministry would continue to count on the support and guidance of the committee to resolve the bottlenecks "we face, and together improve quality and equitable education in Ghana".

The Deputy Ranking Member of the committee, Mr Yaw Owusu-Boateng, gave the assurance that the committee would continue to collaborate with the ministry to find solutions to the numerous challenges facing the educational sector.

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