Gushiegu, (N/R), Nov. 27, GNA - The Gushiegu District in the Northern Region has for sometime now been performing poorly at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), Mr. Mahama Abukari, the District Chief Executive has revealed. He attributed the poor performance of the district to inadequate teachers saying, there was no single school in the district that had got its complement staff, while either a teacher or two was teaching at most primary schools.

Mr. Abukari told the GNA in an interview in Gushiegu on Saturday that the phenomena of shortage of teachers had greatly contributed to the poor foundation of children at the basic level, which subsequently resulted in the poor performance at the BECE. Currently, the district has 206 teachers and out of this number, 80 were trained and 126 pupil teachers, while there were 117 vacancies. Mr. Abukari said the District Assembly had committed two per cent of its Common Fund into an Educational Endowment Fund to improve the quality of education and make it accessible to all. He said 80 per cent of the District Assembly's share of the Common Fund was used for sponsorship of teacher trainees and it had since disbursed 100 million cedis to 80 teacher trainees in the area. He said the assembly was also building teachers accommodation and school blocks as well as KVIPs in some of the deprived communities to motivate teachers to accept postings.

Mr. Abukari urged the people to pay their levies and taxes regularly to the assembly to enable it raise more money to undertake development projects to improve the living conditions of the people.