Bongo, Jan. 10, GNA - Eighty Rural Education Volunteers (REVs) have been recruited and given a five-day intensive training in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region to promote education in the District. The Ghana Education Service (GES) initiated the REVs programme three years ago with support from the Bongo District Assembly and World Vision International (WVI) to augment teachers in the District.

Speaking at a passing out ceremony for the volunteers, the Programme Manager of WVI in Bongo, Madam Benedicta Pealore said inadequate staffing in schools was a worrying situation for all stakeholders in education.

She said World Vision was determined to leave behind a continuing stream of change agents capable of carrying on the development work after it had served its full term in the District.

It was on this basis, she said, that World Vision was putting in place long-term infrastructure and human development measures in the field of education, including a supplementary feeding programme, to bridge the gap between urban and rural schools. The District Director of the GES, Mr. Francis Dong-Betigr thanked World Vision for the numerous interventions including the setting up of a 10-million-cedi endowment fund for needy students in the senior secondary schools.

He said the REV programme played a dual role by recruiting school leavers who had not made good grades to teach in their communities for allowances to enable them go through remedial classes to better their grades.

The Director said the training was timely since large numbers of trained teachers had left for further studies or were on release outside Bongo.

Mr. Dong-Betigr advised the volunteers to work hard and refrain from acts that would land them in unpleasant situations especially HIV/AIDS.

The District Coordinating Director, Mr. Victor Sabog-Moore, expressed the Assembly's gratitude to all stakeholders in seeing to the promotion of education in the District, saying the District placed 29th in the latest BECE, as against 45th the previous year.