Bolgatanga, July 21 GNA - Seventy per cent of children of school-going age in the Bolgatanga Municipality have now been enrolled into schools.

Girl-Child Education has also increased and is almost at par with boys at 1:1 ratio.

These came to light when the Bolgatanga Municipal Director of Education, Mr Anthony Aziabah addressed participants at an Educational Appraisal forum in Bolgatanga under the theme: "Ensuring Quality Education."

Mr Aziabah noted that the Municipal Education Directorate was able to achieve these successes with the support from LINK Community Development (LCD) and the Catholic Relief Services, both international non-governmental organisations (NGOs). He stressed that there was still more to do to improve education in the Municipality, and bemoaned the lateness, absenteeism, indiscipline and drunkenness exhibited by some teachers. He stressed that the Directorate would not countenance with such practices and cautioned that teachers guilty of those tendencies would be punished when caught.

The Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Mr Isaac Nsoh Amoah, indicated that one of the priorities of the Municipality was to improve education, saying the Municipal Assembly was sponsoring trainee teachers in colleges with the view that they would return to teach in there on the completion of their courses.

He noted that plans were far advanced to build more schools and provide teaching and learning materials to schools in the Municipality. Participants at the forum noted that 50 per cent of schools in the Municipality lacked textbooks, which was affecting teaching and learning and appealed to NGOs and all stakeholders in education to come to their aid.

The MCE also called on the Government to improve the conditions of teachers to enable them to discharge their functions efficiently. Dr Kennedy Quaigrain, Director of LCD, sponsors of the forum, announced that so far his outfit had spent 920 million cedis in the provision of capacity building programmes for teachers, circuit supervisors, as well as teaching and learning materials in the Municipality.