Saltpond (C/R), July 17, GNA - District directors of education in the Central Region have appealed to the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Academic Board of the universities implementing the Distance Education Programme to observe the same calendar with the basic schools. The directors stated that when that was done the situation where teachers doing sandwich courses left their classes for residential courses at the universities would not occur.

Speaking to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) after their quarterly meeting at Saltpond, Miss Vivian Etroo, Mfantseman District Director of the GES, stated that the present situation where teachers on the Distance Education Programme were invited to residential courses from June to August when basic schools were in session was compounding the already precarious staffing problems facing some of the schools. Miss Etroo described the Distance Education Programme as "laudable" but contended that its implementation should be streamlined in order not to make pupils to suffer unduly.

She appealed to the government and donor partners to improve school infrastructure to cater for the increase in enrolment as a result of the implementation of the Capitation Grant.

In a welcoming address, Mr Robert Quainoo-Arthur, Mfanteseman District Chief Executive, said the Capitation Grant and the Schools Feeding Programme were government policies to assist the children of the poor to have equal opportunities with those of the rich and appealed to the directors to work hard to make the programmes to succeed. Mr Quainoo-Arthur noted that there were quite a number of children of school-going age who were still out of school and described it as "unacceptable", urging the directors to mob-up all those who were not yet in school.