Tamale, July 5, GNA- Barclays Bank of Ghana has donated a cheque of GH¢ 43, 923.00 to the School for Life (SFL) towards the provision of educational support to deprived children under its school programme in the three Northern regions.

The educational support is for the provision of community based functional literacy classes to under privileged children between the ages of eight to 14 to enable them to become literate in English and their mother tongues.

The SFL is a functional literacy programme that provides education for underprivileged children such as shepherd boys or others who missed out of the formal school system.

Mr. Benjamin Debrah, Managing Director of Barclays Bank, made the presentation of the cheque to Mr. Sulemana Osman Saaka, Programme Director of the SFL at a brief ceremony in Tamale on Saturday. Mr. Debrah said the Bank recognized the importance of education in the development of the country and therefore wished to support government's efforts to ensure the provision of education to all school-going children.

He said the Bank, as part of its community sustainability programme provides assistance to organizations such as the SFL to undertake their activities, adding that, it was one of the ways through which the Bank helped in the development of the communities in which they worked. He said the partnership between the Bank and the SFL was part of its global "Banking on brighter futures" which focused on education and entrepreneurship by using knowledge and expertise as financial services organization to enable the Bank to make a social difference beyond simply giving out money.

Mr. Debrah gave assurance of Barclays Banks commitment to the programmes of SFL and said it would monitor its progress and continue to support when necessary.

He urged the SFL to replicate its programme in other areas of the country to help achieve universal basic education for all school-going children by 2015.

Mr. Debrah urged pupils, teachers to be committed to the studies and work and appealed to parents to take interest in the education of their wards by monitoring their performance at school.

Mr. Saaka said the SFL had educated and turned out over 100,000 students who had been integrated into the formal school system with some of them gaining admission into tertiary institutions.

He said the problem facing those who were in the tertiary institutions was how they could continue with their education since they were from very deprived communities and appealed for financial support from the Bank and benevolent organizations to assist such students.