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• Mrs Harriet Nuamah Agyemang, Programme Officer, SEND-GHANA, addressing the participants.  Picture: EDNA ADUSERWAA

Education delivery improves in 7015 schools

There has been a general improvement in standard education delivery, in 7015 basic schools that benefited from the Global Partnership Education Grant (GPEG) a report launched by the Social Enterprise Development (SEND) Ghana, a non-profit organisation, has revealed.

The report said the beneficiary schools located in 75 deprived districts in seven regions had seen to improvement in the areas of access to education, effective monitoring of teaching and learning, school managment and participation.

The report, which followed a survey conducted in 13 out of the 75 beneficiary districts, however revealed that the education of the girl-child remained a major hurdle that needed serious commitment and resources from stakeholders to overcome.

 

The GPEG, a World Bank support initiative, aimed at improving the planning, monitoring and delivery of basic education in the beneficiary districts in the Upper East, Upper West, Northern, Volta, Brong Ahafo, Central and Eastern regions.

The project, implemented from 2012 to 2015, was sponsored with a $75.5 million grant from the GPEG targeted at the four thematic areas-monitoring, access to education, participation and school management.

It first began with 6,600 basic schools in 57 districts but due to the success of the project, the beneficiary schools were increased to 7,015 basic schools located in 75 districts.

Success

Presenting the report in Accra last Thursday, a research member of the SEND-Ghana, Mrs Harriet Nuamah Agyeman, said the findings by her outfit showed that the GPEG had achieved over 80 per cent success in relation to the objectives in the four thematic areas.

She said based on the massive success chalked up in those thematic areas, the state of education delivery in the selected districts had been boosted significantly.

However, Mrs Agyeman expressed concern that funding for the project officially came to an end in August this year.

“Currently, we are only engaged in a mop-up assessment of the project prior to its official closure by June 2016,” she stated.

She, therefore, appealed to the  government to support the project with alternative funding in order to sustain the gains so far.

Girl-child education

Mrs Agyemang stated that the education of the girl-child remained a major challenge and therefore called for special incentive packages to motivate girls to go to school and improve their academic performance.

“Even though there have been significant improvements in the four thematic areas, the quality of the performance of the pupils, mainly the girl-child, does not correspond with the investment made in their education.

“About 55 per cent of the school children, particularly female pupils, dropped out of school and we need to institute the needed measures to reverse the trend,” she said.

Eliminate barriers

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of SEND-West Africa, Mr Siapha Kamara, said GPEG had helped to remove barriers to quality education by financially empowering schools in deprived rural communities to acquire teaching and learning materials.

He stated that with Ghana’s current status as a lower middle income country, it was not eligible to benefit from the fund in the future. He therefore urged the government to continue to provide the materials for those deprived schools on a sustainable basis.

For his part, the Project Coordinator of GPEG, Mr Kwame Agyapong, commended SEND-Ghana for contributing to the success of the project.

He said his outfit would embrace the recommendations made by the NGO and dialogue with the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the government to see the best way to sustain the project.  

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