DFID provides GH¢60m to support education programme in Ghana
The British government, through the Department for International Development (DFID), has committed GH¢60 million to support a Complimentary Education Programme (CBE) to be implemented in four regions in the country.
The programme is a ground-breaking and accelerated approach that teaches marginalized children how to read, write in their own dialects and become numerate within nine months.
The three-year programme began in October 2013 in the Upper East, Upper West, Northern and Brong-Ahafo Regions and the Ministry of Education through the Ghana Education Service, is the implementing co-coordinator.
Some 1,000 CBE classes would be established in 35 target districts in the four regions to achieve its set target of enrolling 120,000 out-of-school children in deprived communities between three and four years in the implementing regions.
Ms Sally Taylor, Country Director of DFID who said this at a durbar at Kintampo to kick-start the programme in the Brong-Ahafo Region, expressed worry about the gloomy picture of about 440,000 out-of-school children in the country.
Mission of Hope Society (MIHOSO), a non-governmental organization, is the CBE implementing agency in the Brong-Ahafo Region.
Ms Taylor said UK’s development assistance in Ghana had a strong focus on education, especially helping the country to achieve the Millennium Development Goals on universal access to basic education and gender equality.
“I am therefore pleased to be involved in another important step towards ensuring that every Ghanaian child gets an opportunity to go to school and become the people they have the potential to be”, she said.
Mr Thomas Benarkuu, Programme Co-ordinator of MIHOSO, said the NGO had established 36 school classes, rescued and enrolled 900 out-of-school children in the Kintampo South and Pru districts using the CBE methodology in teaching them.
He said the CBE programme demonstrated strong retention and completion rates and that the programme gave the opportunity to girl child education.
Mr Benarkuu said under the programme the academic year starts in October every year where school-going-age children who are out of school, are invited and provided with incentives to encourage them to join the CBE classes.
During this period the children are taught how to read, write and numerate in their local languages, he said, adding that classes are always held in the afternoons.
Mr Benarkuu said senior high school graduates in the implementing communities are engaged to teach the children at a fee, adding that .on completion the children would be integrated into the formal education sector to acquire basic education.
Source: GNA