Wa, May 14, GNA - An Assistant Director of Education has directed heads of senior secondary schools in the Upper West Region to channel all Resources Centre user fees paid by students into the centre's accounts.

Mr George Guri, Assistant Director of Education in charge of Inspection at the Regional Directorate of the Ghana Education Service, attributed the poor performance of students in science subjects in the region to lack of materials for practical lessons. He said most of the headmasters were not using the Resource Centre fees for the purpose it was intended for.

Mr Guri, who is also the Regional Science Co-ordinator for schools, was speaking at a workshop for science teachers drawn from senior secondary schools, teacher training colleges and junior secondary schools in the region at Wa.

The workshop was organised by the regional branch of the Ghana Association of science Teachers with support from the District Directorate of Education and Heads of Second Cycle Schools in the region.

Mr Guri called on stakeholders, especially district assemblies, to help solve the problem of inadequate exposure of students to practical science lessons by providing logistics and transport to enable students of satellite schools to have practical lessons at the Science Resource centres.

Commenting on the performance of girls in science in the region, he said there was a marked improvement with girls in Lassia-Tuolu Secondary School in Wa West District, scoring the two best grades in science subjects in the 2004 Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination. He said the same could not be said at the basic level where only 38 per cent of female candidates were successful at BECE in 2004 as against 70 per cent successful male candidates.

The participants at the workshop identified the general shortage of science and technical teachers and inadequate practical laboratory work as two major factors that contributed to the poor performance of students in science subjects in the region.