Regional News of Thursday, 27 April 2006

Source: GNA

NNED expresses fears of high school drop out

Bolgatanga, April 27, GNA- The Northern Network For Education Development (NNED), a local NGO, on Thursday expressed fear that half of school children who had been enrolled through the introduction of the Capitation Grant would drop out if nothing was done to improve the quality of teaching and learning.

This was contained in a statement on signed by, Mr Eric Duorinaah, the Co-ordinator of NNED.

The NGO, which is involved in ensuring that children of school going age in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions are enrolled in schools and receive quality education, stressed that unless there were enough motivated and well-trained teachers, the three Northern regions would not be able to achieve the goal of Education For All (EFA).

The statement said with the introduction of the Capitation Grant there had been an increase of at least, 16 percent of enrolment figures in Ghana of which, six out of every 10 children were known to be enrolled in primary one in the three Northern regions.

It appealed to the government to expedite action by ensuring that more qualified and well-motivated teachers were provided to meet the challenges of the enrolment figures.

It noted with regret that there were reported cases of many teachers in Ghana Education Service district offices throughout the country who were doing virtually nothing and called for the redeployment of such teachers to the rural areas where there were great demand for teachers. The statement cautioned politicians and people in high positions to desist from interfering in matters relating to the posting of teachers. It appealed to the government to hasten to improve the working condition of teachers in order to attract more teachers into the profession.