Government urged to ensure sustenance of CBE
Stakeholders of the Complimentary Basic Education Programme (CBE) have called on the government to ensure the programme is sustained beyond 2018.
Advertisement
They emphasised the need for the government to make financial commitment to continue the implementation of the CBE activities in deprived communities across the country.
The CBE programme, which is currently working with key programme stakeholders to recruit 120,000 children, offers a flexible approach that accommodates out-of-school children, between the ages of eight and 14, in the poorest rural and hard-to-reach areas, to attend classes that are held using their local language.
The classes, which are held by well-trained facilitators, made up of senior high school graduates from the communities, also provide opportunity to equip disadvantaged children especially girls with reading, writing as well as numeracy skills in their mother tongue.
CBE learners, who are taught by young community volunteers, known as facilitators, who have gone through some professional capacity development, do not pay fees, and they have access to textbooks and other learning materials.
Resource investment
According to the Education Programmes Director of IBIS Ghana, Mr Zakaria Sulemana, “Government needs to invest resources into this programme to mob up the rest of the out-of- school children in Ghana, this is very important because donor funding will end in 2018.”
He said the CBE was meant to fulfil and promote the right of deprived children to quality education, and, therefore, pleaded with the government to invest time and money into the project to ensure continuity, especially when the current donor funding ends in 2018.
“It is not a privilege but a right for every individual to enjoy quality basic education, therefore, the government must ensure that this programme continues to run, especially after donor support ceases,” he said.
The District Director of Education for Sawla-Tuna-Kalba in the Northern Region, Mr James Kala Ewuntomah, also advised the government to make funding available to facilitate the full implementation of the programme. He added that the CBE had contributed immensely to enrolment in the district and must be sustained to enable many out-of-school children to acquire formal education.
Mr Ewuntomah, who was full of praise for the CBE programme, stated that the programme had increased the number of children enrolled in various schools within the Sawla-Tuna-Kalba District of the Northern Region.
“In the 2015-2016 academic year, the total number of students enrolled in the district was 18,987. Out of this the CBE students who transitioned to formal education was 2,047 constituting 1,098 males and 947 females,” he added.
Mr Ewuntomah also emphasised that “records have shown that most of the CBE students who have transitioned into the formal schools are performing better than their peers in the formal basic education”.
Why CBE programme?
In spite of the huge increases in enrolment in primary education over the past two decades due to the School Feeding Programme and the Capitation Grant policies of government, a significant number of Ghanaian children are still unable to attend school, particularly in the rural deprived areas.
Additionally, many children from deprived communities, especially northern Ghana, are required to participate in domestic chores, agricultural or other work-related activities and therefore are excluded from basic education.
For nearly 20 years, non-governmental organisations including IBIS Ghana and School for Life have been delivering CBE in Ghana with support from a number of Ghana’s development partners.
In September 2013, the government of Ghana, with assistance from the Department for International Development (DFID) adopted and expanded the CBE programme across the country to provide out-of-school children with literacy, numeracy and life skills in order for them to access primary education.
CBE classes are usually held in the afternoon to allow children to support their parents with household tasks in the morning. Following completion of the CBE cycle which is nine months, the children are tested and subsequently integrated into nearby primary schools.
