Need to conduct National Literacy Survey on the Youth – Prof. Oheneba-Sakyi

An educationist has called for a comprehensive National Literacy Survey to determine the literacy status of the Ghanaian Youth and formulate a policy framework to empower them.

Professor Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, Director of Institute of Continuing and Distance Education (ICDE) of University of Ghana (UG), Legon, said record of a national literacy survey was non-existent stressing that available records were conducted by individual researchers.

“How can we understand the youth when we do not study them,” he asked.

Prof. Oheneba-Sakyi was addressing participants at the on-going 62nd Annual New Year School organised by ICDE of UG on Wednesday in Accra.

He called for intensified effort to revamp youth literacy adding it had socio-economic implications.

Prof. Oheneba-Sakyi called for the recruitment, training and employment of adult literacy facilitators, adding that such facilitators needed to be motivated to stay in the educational sector.

He called for the redistribution of qualified teachers to rural communities to strengthen education in the countryside.

Ms Sussy Bedie, Deputy Director of the Non-Formal Education Division of the Ministry of Education, expressed worry over the falling standards of quality education and called for pragmatic approach to forestall the situation.

She said the 2000 Population and Housing Census records youth and adult literacy rate at 46.3 per cent with rural literacy hitting 59.9 per cent, adding the situation was appalling.

Ms Bedie underscored the importance of youth and lifelong learning for posterity.

Source: GNA