Jirapa (U/W), Feb. 8, GNA - The performance of pupils who sat the Ba= sic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the Jirapa District improved, scoring 52 per cent in 2010 as against 49.5 per cent last year. This modest improvement followed an intervention dubbed 93Tackling Education Needs Inclusively (TENI)."

It was initiated and being implemented by ProNet North and Voluntary Service Organization (VSO) with funds from Comic Relief, an organization in the United Kingdom following a run of poor BECE results in the district Mr. Martin Bayor, the Jirapa District Director of Education, said thi= s at a school performance appraisal meeting organized by ProNet North for selected pupils, parents and teachers in the district at Jirapa on Monday The five-year intervention programme, which started in the district last year with the use of Saint Anthony Primary in Jirapa as the pilot school, is engaging the communities to strengthen structures to address the challenges in education in the district and improve girl-child education in particular. Mr. Bayor identified the lack of teachers at all levels of basic education as the major challenge confronting quality education in the district He said there was an average of one teacher to over 100 kindergarten pupils while at the Junior High School level it was one teacher per 48 pupils.

He said through the intervention of ProNet North and VSO the situation has improved with the engagement of more service persons as teachers in the district.

Mr. Martin Dery, Director of ProNet North, said the intervention did not seek to blame anybody or groups of persons for the falling standards of education in the district but to identify the challenges and take practical steps to address them.

His organization, he said, was interested in girl-child education because women suffered the most and education for girls was the best way of empowering them to break out of the poverty cycle. Lessons that would be learnt from the programme would be carried to Civil Society and government platforms.

Results of Tests administered to primary class three and four pupils in the 47 schools in the district this year showed an average score of 46 per cent in Mathematics, 42.5 per cent in English and 31 per cent in Science. Mr. Benard Puozuing, Jirapa District Chief Executive, said the Distric= t Assembly had responded positively to some of the challenges facing educatio= n in the district. These include construction of school structures and provision of furniture, provision of 6,000 school uniforms by the government and the increase in the beneficiaries of the school feeding programme.