Wa, March 10, GNA - The Upper West Regional Coordinating Council is to rely on French teachers from Burkina Faso to teach students at the Junior High School level.

The Council is currently in talks with educational institutions in Burkina Faso in order to make this a reality. Mr Fabian Balieb Upper West Regional Director of Education, who told the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, said if the deal went through the National Accreditation Board wo uld be required to examine and evaluate certificates of such teachers. He said it would also help curtail the difficulties that Junior High School students in the Sissala East, Sissala West and Sissala South in the Wa East District went through since they did not sit for Dagaare and French at the Basic Education Certification Examination due to lack of subject teachers in those areas.

Mr Balieb said any school that did not offer a Ghanaian language and French language has to do only five subjects. He said but students in such schools stood the risk of not getting admission to Senior High schools because under the Computerized School Selection and Placement System (CSSPS) six subjects were considered. The Director suggested that the French language should be made a compulsory subject at the Junior High School level and noted that many of the public schools were not teaching French because of lack of teachers. ".It is highly difficult to get qualified French teachers to cover all our schools", he said explaining that if the collaboration went through it would supplement government's efforts in providing French teachers to teach at the basic level.

Similar collaboration was also taking place in the health and agriculture sectors and security agencies in the region with Burkina Faso with the objective of fighting common diseases, improving husbandry and environment and cross border crimes, especially motorbike stealing and cattle rustling.

Under health, surveillance on diseases and the development of a common strategy for effective prevention of disease, especially communicable diseases would be improved. Dr Alexis Nang-Beifubah, Upper West Regional Director of Health Service said sharing of surveillance reports with Burkina Faso would be strengthened to contain communicable diseases among human beings and animals in the two countries. 10 March 10