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• Mrs Susan Namondo Ngongi (left) and Mr James A. Bever the USAID Mission Director exchanging documents after signing the agreement. With them is Mr Charles Aheto-Tsegah, (middle).

US commits funds to improve education at basic level in Ghana

The United States of America (USA) has committed $14.5 million to improve the quality of education at the basic level in Ghana.

An agreement to that effect was signed between the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Accra on Thursday.

The pact is aimed at improving the learning of children in kindergarten, including the vulnerable or out-of-schoolchildren, girls and children with learning difficulties.

Under the four-year agreement, UNICEF will support the Ghana Education Service (GES) to pilot a new integrated smartphone platform for collecting information about schools in 14 districts.

The Mobile School Report Card System is an android solution developed locally with the aim of generating reliable up-to-date data on key education indicators for better planning and decision making.

A major benefit of the integrated smartphone platform is the ability to collect data about schools from various levels into the system, including community members, teachers and supervisors and return aggregated data in a quick and efficient manner.

Grade reading performance

The USAID Mission Director to Ghana, Mr James A. Bever, who signed the agreement on behalf of the US Government, said the partnership would support the printing and nationwide distribution of teaching and learning materials for kindergarten pupils.

He said the support would also scale up UNICEF’s “hanging library” initiative, portable libraries that hold 50 English and local language stories for disadvantaged primary classrooms.

“In addition, with the support of USAID, UNICEF will conduct a national campaign to raise awareness among parents of the contribution of disabled children to society through the development and distribution of prototype materials geared for use by educators and children with special needs” Mr Bever said.

According to him, over the past years, the US government had invested hugely to improve Ghana’s education system, “ which has witnessed a major improvement.”

UNICEF committed

The UNICEF Representative in Ghana, Mrs Namondo Ngongi, who initialled on behalf of the Agency, said the partnership would help Ghana’s early grade learners to have greater opportunity to build their reading skills at the foundation level.

He said over the next four years, innovation solutions, a cornerstone of the partnership, would be developed and scaled up.

“Classroom level libraries with local story books for children aimed at improving access to reading materials for children from disadvantaged backgrounds are being developed and scaled up,” Mrs Ngongi added.

For his part, the outgoing acting Director-General of GES, Mr Charles Aheto-Tsegah, said Ghana had made steady and commendable progress in the education sector over the past few years.

“We are looking forward to our continued collective investment in the education sector and working towards equitable and inclusive quality education and lifelong learning for all Ghanaian children over the coming years,” he said.

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