The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) has begun distributing Road Safety Textbooks and Teaching Manuals to primary and junior high schools across the country to help minimise road traffic casualties involving children.

A statement from the commission said the distribution of the textbooks and teaching manuals formed part of the commission’s mandate to promote the teaching and learning of road safety as part of the academic curriculum in basic schools.

The commission, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education (MoE) and the Ghana Education Service (GES), has produced Road Safety Textbooks and Teaching Manuals as part of the NRSC’s efforts to minimise the risk and incidences associated with child deaths on the road.

The content of the books have taken into account general and specific child road safety-related problems in both international and local context with practical examples to promote best road user behaviour on the road.

Thirty thousand copies of the textbooks and 20,000 copies of the Teaching Manual have been produced by the commission, with funding from the World Bank-financed Transport Sector Project (TSP).

In all, 425 basic and junior high schools strategically situated within the Greater Accra, Central and Western regions have been targeted for the distribution exercise.

In the long term, however, the commission intends to seek additional funding in order to cover all basic and junior high schools in the country, the statement said.

In furtherance of this, the commission, with financial support from the European Union Commission in Ghana, has already undertaken trainer of trainers workshops for teachers and School Help Education Programme Co-ordinators (SHEP) across the country to enable them teach the subject effectively.

The teaching and learning of road safety in schools as a road safety countermeasure has been adopted by member countries, including Ghana, of the West African Road Safety Organisation (WARSO).

In the coming years, the teaching and learning of road safety will ultimately be incorporated in the academic curriculum of all basic schools in West Africa, including examinable questions on road safety in the Civic Education or Social Studies examinations by the West African Examination Council (WAEC) for member countries.

Child safety is one of the most critical issues in road safety management in Ghana.

Over the years, children of school-going age (from 0 – 16 years) have emerged as a vulnerable road user group in road traffic crashes in Ghana considering that on the average they constitute 23% of the total number of persons killed as pedestrians annually through road traffic crashes in Ghana.

Most of the children get killed by motorists while they cross the road.