By Francis Cofie
Accra, April 6, GNA – The Ga Central Municipal Assembly has held a day’s stakeholders forum to brainstorm on modalities to resolve common challenges militating against educational performance and how to improve quality of teaching and learning in the municipality.
It was attended by heads of basic schools, members of Parents Teachers Associations, chairpersons of the 18 basic schools and the Director of education in the area.
Mr Mohammed Bashiru Kamara Mohammed, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) commended the efforts of teachers at imparting knowledge to children to become responsible citizens.
He described the “drop and learn” practice of one of the schools where pupils come to school early in the morning and read ahead of the normal session as exemplary and asked all schools to adopt same.
He said the scheme was important and it would better the lot of the children in their learning.
The MCE said the Assembly would embark on a regular visit to schools to assess the challenges and to address them while liaising with the education directorate and parents to tackle incidents of indiscipline in some of the schools, which had telling effect on pupils’ performance.
Mr Mohammed urged parents to double their efforts in instilling discipline and providing the educational needs of their children at all times.
On infrastructure, he said, a six-unit classroom block at Salvation Army and Abeka Motorway would be constructed to help ease congestion whilst others would be undertaken gradually.
“An award scheme would be instituted at all basic schools in the municipality as a way of encouraging teaching and learning among school children and teachers to raise the standard of performance,” he stated.
He charged the participants to document their recommendations to challenges that they may identified in schools to enable the Assembly to implement them.
Mrs Cynthia Winnifred Gbadago, the Municipal Education Director said the Directorate would engage with parents to find appropriate means of administering punishment to pupils who violate the rules and conventions of the classroom and in the society.
Mrs Gbadago mentioned some of the proposed measures as writing an undertaking to bind them to certain duties or be denied some comfort or privileges to whip them into line and other sanctions for Junior High School students who absent themselves from school.
She said concerted efforts were needed from both parents and teachers to fight the issue of teenage pregnancy amongst the adolescent girls and urged participants to help push the frontiers of education in the municipality.
GNA