Mr James Kala Ewuntomah, the West Mamprusi District Director of Education, has warned that teachers who play truancy in the district would be demoted while those who have no positions would have their salaries withheld.

This, he said, would help improve the continuous falling in education standards especially at the basic level.

“Teachers must work to justify the salaries they are receiving and those who fail to live up to expectation would pay the price for their actions,” he said.

Mr Ewuntomah said this in Walewale on Tuesday during the launch of Phase II of Tackling Educational Needs Inclusively (TENI II), a programme aimed at encouraging local community support in areas of teacher volunteerism and redeployment in order to increase quality basic education in the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions.

The Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC) is implementing the three-year project with support from Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO) in the West Mamprusi and the Mamprugu Moaduri Districts in the Northern Region, Talensi-Nabdam district in the Upper East Region and the Jirapa District in the Upper West Region.

Mr Ewuntomah said some teachers especially those in the rural areas only reported to work when it was close to salaries while some of the teachers on National Service were also reporting to work when they needed their forms to be endorsed, a practice he said would not continue under his watch.

He commended ISODEC for the TENI I project, which had so far benefited some 8,000 girls in the areas of building capacities, study tours as well as Science Technology Innovation.

President John Dramani Mahama launched the Phase I of TENI in May, 2009 when he was Vice President, which aimed among other things to address education needs in some parts of the north and was to benefit some 48,000 children, 2,000 teachers and 25,000 parents from the beneficiary districts.

Comic Relief, UK-based grants making organisation, which funded the Phase I of TENI with 3 million pounds Sterling is still funding the phase II.

Madam Agnes Gandaa, Northern Ghana Programmes coordinator, said quality education remained the bedrock for poverty reduction and sustained development and that developing countries were trying hard to comply with the MDGs of providing quality education for all children by 2015.

She said TENI was also aimed at achieving systematic change in basic education by improving retention, transition, completion and quality of basic education for disadvantaged children particularly girls and children with disabilities.

Mrs Gandaa said the overall goal of the project was to improve pupils’ transition from primary to junior high schools as well as retaining them in school, monitoring their performance and completion rates while a number of teachers had benefited from some training programmes.

She said TENI II would contribute greatly to the empowerment of girls and people with disabilities and would further strengthen community support and demand quality education for girls.

Mrs Gandaa said while TENI I mobilized and strengthened PTAs, SMCs, community groups, National Volunteers and female role models, TENI II intended to build effective networks of community advocates and role models.

Madam Gandaa called for support of chiefs in all the beneficiary districts to ensure that the project succeeded to improve education and quality of life of community members.

Mr Eric Dourinaah, Programmes Manager, of VSO said TENI had been introduced due to the continued gender parity in education especially girls education and expressed the hope that the TENI interventions would help reverse the situation.

He said VSO would continue to partner with stakeholders to fight the imbalance in education especially girls education and people with disabilities.

Mr Dourinaah appealed to heads of schools to always provide specific figures on children’s population to ensure that all children especially girls got support from NGOs who are into educational intervention programmes.