The Accra Metropolitan Directorate of Education has organised this year’s Schools Performance Appraisal Monitoring (SPAM) meeting at Kokomlemle in Accra.

The SPAM is a tool that provides opportunities for schools to provide answers to the responsibilities entrusted into their care.

It also provides opportunities for school authorities and parents to air their opinions on prevailing concerns in the schools of their wards.

Mrs Angela Tena Mensah, Accra Metro Director of Education in a welcome address, said the performance appraisal was a collective approach to reflect on work done and deliberate on lapses whilst setting targets towards an improved performance.

It is also meant to identify and discuss problems affecting the basic schools in the metropolis and to design strategies to solve them.

Mrs Mensah said the contribution of stakeholders is relevant towards the provision of quality education and improved performance of the schools.

She said there is no improvement without challenges adding that “SPAM will enable us to make critical analysis of the previous Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results and identify the challenges associated with poor performances.

“We will listen to the success stories of some of the schools with good performance, learn from their techniques and apply them,” Mrs Mensah said.

Mrs Felicia Boakye Yiadom, the Greater Accra Regional Director of Education, said Ghanaians see the Accra Metropolitan Education Directorate as the lens through which they see and determine the progress of education in the country.

She urged the participants to be innovative and constantly bring up new ideas to improve their teaching and learning skills.

Mr Boakye Yiadom said the SPAM is an accountability forum, where schools, especially head teachers, are called upon to answer for the performance of their pupils and it is designed for educational authorities and the community at large.

“This would help end the blame on teachers and heads of schools when the performances of the pupils are poor. Accountability in teaching and learning is a shared responsibility,” she said.

Some of the concerns raised at the forum, include: teachers, who trek from far places to school, the lack of furniture in some schools, large class sizes, truancy and the lack of parental control of some pupils.