By Hannah Awadzi
Accra, Nov. 17, GNA – The La-Nkwantanang Madina Municpal Education office has engaged stakeholders on a programme that seeks to reintegrate out of school children into the educational system.
Under the project, the Ghana Education Service will, through its implementing agency, train, re-integrate and retain out-of-school children in the 600 plus beneficiary schools as well as improve learning gain/outcomes in these schools
The Project, Ghana Education Outcomes Project (GEOP) stems out of the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP), a five-year project with the objective to improve the quality of education in low-performing basic education schools and strengthen education sector equity and accountability in Ghana.
Ms Amelia Dzifa Atiegar, Public Relations Officer of La-Nkwantanang municipal of education who briefed stakeholders on GEOP said existing data from the Ghana Statistical Service on the number of out-of-school children in the country (2010/20 Census) indicate a high prevalence of out-of-school children.
“The need to follow the successes chalked from the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme by Ghana Education Service which resulted in over 200,000 children going back to school,” she said.
She said that over the years, Ghana has made significant progress in improving learning outcomes in schools and getting children back into schools through policy direction.
However, existing data from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (USI, 2020) indicates that, for Primary (6-11 years) – 283,000 are out-of-school.
135,000 are out-of-school, for Lower Secondary (12-14 years) and 610,000 are out-of-school for Upper secondary (15-17 years)
Ms Atiegar said out of school children, identified as part of the project would be accessed and given technical and vocational training for a period and based on their performance some will be integrated into mainstream education
She said the re-integrating out-of-school children (OOSC), is built on the success of the Complimentary Basic Education (CBE) programme and expanding it to incentivise learning and retention
The project is being implemented in 29 Metropolitan, Municipal & District Assemblies (MMDAs) including the La-Nkwantanang Madina Municipal.
The regions benefitting from the project are Northern, Northeast, Savannah, Bono East, Oti, Greater Accra, and Ashanti Regions.
GNA