By Abert Futukpor
Tamale, Oct 07, GNA – Key stakeholders in education in the Tolon and Nanton Districts have attended an orientation workshop to improve their knowledge and understanding of the requirements of the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) Policy and its implementation.
They included directors of the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Complementary Education Agency (CEA) as well as representatives and or directors of the Tolon and Nanton District Assemblies.
They were taken through the CBE and its Policy Direction, and the CEA’s Strategic Direction.
The day’s orientation workshop, held in Tamale, was organised by School for Life, a non-governmental organisation, as part of its implementation of the Strategic Actions for Girls Education (SAGE) project.
The SAGE project is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) through STAR Ghana Foundation under the Gender Rights and Empowerment Programme with the FCDO’s partnership beyond aid programme.
The target beneficiaries are girls in deprived communities in the Northern Region, especially girls who have been out-of-school or are at risk of dropping out-of-school by creating the enabling, safe and friendly environment that allows them to actively participate and thrive in schools.
Madam Wedad Sayibu, Director of School for Life, speaking during the workshop, said “through our interactions with the key stakeholders when we started this project, we observed that most of them are not aware of the existence of the CBE Policy, and also do not have the policy document,” hence the workshop.
She added that “This workshop is important because as key stakeholders responsible to drive the processes of the programme implementation, they need to be aware of the policy and what their mandate or responsibilities are with respect to the policy.”
The CBE Policy provides all out-of-school children, aged eight to 16 years, with access to an accelerated numeracy and literacy programme in their mother tongue or community language targeted to their needs, and to enable them to acquire the basic knowledge and skills required for admission to stay and complete formal basic education.
Statistics by the Ministry of Education showed that in 2016, there were 400,000 out-of-school children in the country, and 160,000 of them were in the Northern, North East and Savannah Regions.
Various reasons accounted for the phenomenon, including lack of schools in the communities, and some teachers not accepting postings to rural areas, hence the CBE programme to address the situation.
Madam Sayibu expressed optimism that the orientation would enable “All key stakeholders, who are expected to play roles per the CBE Policy, are really doing so effectively to ensure that children, who are out-of-school, are supported with the requisite environment and resources through the CBE programme to have access to education.”
During the workshop, participants committed to call on the GES and the CEA to make provision for CBE programme in their budgets to be captured in the composite budget.
Madam Sayibu expressed joy for the level of commitment shown by the stakeholders and said, “For me, that is refreshing, and what we will do as an organisation and as a project is to follow-up on this commitment to ensure that at least in the next year’s composite budget, CBE intervention is actually adequately captured”.
She indicated that “in Nanton and Tolon in particular, by next year, we are expecting that at least one or two CBE classes will be established. That will demonstrate the local governments’ commitment to the implementation of the CBE programme.”
Mr Adamu Seidu Abariche, Deputy Director in-charge of Monitoring and Supervision at the Tolon District Directorate of Education, said, “We are happy about the CBE programme because in Tolon, we have about 112 schools, 79 primary and 33 junior high, but we have overwhelming numbers of out-of-school children even though we have implemented the CBE programme over the years”.
She said the programme had come to help get all the other children, who are still loitering in the communities to return to school so that the Directorate could achieve 100 per cent in terms of all children being in school and complete at least basic education.
Mr Justice Agyei-Quartey, Technical Advisor, CEA advised participants “To take the programme as our own. Don’t see it as School for Life’s programme but see it as all the stakeholders’ programme that we are implementing together to ensure that the out-of-school children menace is erased from our country.”
GNA