IBIS Ghana ends $5m project in two districts

IBIS Ghana, an educational sensitive non-governmental organisation has folded up its Alliance for Change in Education (ACE) project in the Gushegu and Karaga districts of the Northern Region.

The project was started in 2007 in the two districts targeting children in hard-to-reach and underserved communities.

It enrolled more than 9,000 children in school, created 39 fully fledged schools and 56 wing schools in the two districts with the expectation to transform educational standards in the near future.

Mr Chals Wontewe, Country Director of IBIS who addressed a ceremony in Tamale to end the project on Tuesday said three Danish organisations came together with other local partners to implement the seven-year project.

Approximately $5 million was spent on the project.

He said wing schools, which were classrooms set up in deprived communities from kindergarten to primary three were initially built to create access for children of school going age.

Mr Wontewe noted that many of such schools have now been transformed into full-fledged primary schools.

He said through the efforts of the actors including the district assemblies, 56 communities with children as young as five could access education at their doorsteps.

More than 1,000 of such pupils would be going to the junior high school this academic year.

Mr Wontewe said through the project, 200 senior high school levers were recruited to teach in the communities but the IBIS-ACE project assisted them to gain admission into training college through the Untrained Teacher’s Diploma in Basic Education (UTDBE).

Forty had completed their course and had become professional teachers.

“Assessment of quality of learning and teaching in these wing schools revealed positive results…by class three, (more than) 75 per cent of them have the ability to read and write and this has become a motivation for many more parents to enrol their children in school,” he said.

Mr Wontewe urged the Ministry of Education to adopt the wing school model to give more access to children of school going age since the initiative had proved positive.

Alhaji Alhassan Fuseini, Gushegu District Chief Executive on behalf of the two districts pledged the commitment to foot the bills of the students training under the UTDBE.

Miss Salifu Samamatu, a beneficiary of the project who is now a teacher commended the IBIS-ACE project for the initiative.

She said without the training: “I will have been in the cities doing kayaye (head porter).”

Source: GNA