192,000 Out-of-school children transition into formal school
A total of 192,000 out-of-school children in 45 districts across five regions in the country have so far been transitioned into formal schools since the inception of the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme in 2013 to date.
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The five-year project, expected to end in 2018, is a functional literacy programme to support children between the ages of eight and 14 who have not attended school, to enable them to access education with a stepping stone phase of literacy classes taught in their mother tongues and held in their local communities for nine months.
The Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of Crown Agents, the implementing agency for the programme, Mr Justice Agyei-Quartey, disclosed this in an interview with journalists at Botingli in the Tolon District in the Northern Region.
He was in the district to transition a total of 778 learners who had graduated from the programme to join their counterparts in formal schools when school re-opens in September this year.
Target
Mr Agyei-Quartey said the original target of the CBE programme was to enrol 200,000 out-of-school children from 2013 to 2018, but they had anticipated that the programme would exceed the targeted figure by enrolling an additional 20,000 who would be transitioned into formal schools for the 2017/2018 academic year.
“After this, we expect the government to take over the project for implementation,” he stated.
Beneficiary regions
Mr Agyei-Quartey said the CBE programme was being implemented by Crown Agents in partnership with other 10 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions and funded by the United Kingdom Government Department for International Development (DFID) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
At a community durbar at Botingli last Thursday, the Project Manager of World Education Incorporated Ghana, one of the NGOs implementing the CBE programme in the Tolon district in partnership with Crown Agents, Mr Laud Dei, said so far, 1,833 out-of-school children had been enrolled onto the programme in the district since 2015.
He said out of the total number of learners enrolled for the period, 1,035 comprising 487 males and 548 females successfully graduated and transitioned into formal schools.
Communities without schools
Mr Dei said in 2016, his organisation, through the CBE programme, advocated for three formal schools to be established in three communities without schools in the district.
He mentioned the communities as Dingoni, Kugulogu and Kurugu-Vohoyayili, adding that that was approved by the District Education Oversight Committee (DEOC) and currently, those communities had formal schools.
Educational materials
The Director for Consultancy, Crown Agent team, Ms Lizz Munday, who led a delegation from Crown Agents to the durbar presented teaching and learning materials, including exercise books, pencils and erasers for distribution to the learners who had graduated from the programme and would join their counterparts in formal schools in September this year.
Ms Lizz commended the community members for their cooperation and support for the programme.
CBE programme
The overall goal of the CBE programme is to complement the formal school system by increasing enrolment, as well as piloting the use of locally adopted teaching methodologies such as the use of mother tongues, locally adopted timing of classes, recruitment of voluntary facilitators, the use of child-centred teaching and learning mother tongue.
It is also aimed at supporting the government’s efforts to achieve Universal Primary Education Coverage ensuring that every child of school-going age is attending school, which is line with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4).
The programme also focuses on more female involvement, an effort to focus more on creating access to basic education for girls and empowering women in the community as a whole.