70 school drop-outs transition to SHS in Upper East
Mr Francis Asumadu, Acting Director of Complementary Education Agency (CEA), says 70 Primary School drop-outs have successfully transitioned into Senior High Schools (SHS) in the Upper East Region to continue their education.
“In this Region, we have transitioned 70 of them, so, if we take it up very well, by the close of 2022, we should be able to transition about 1000 Primary School dropouts back to the Free SHS,” he said.
He said, hitherto Non-Formal Education, which changed to the CEA, created more opportunities for people who had dropped out of school to be trained and transitioned into formal school.
That, he said was done from primary to tertiary level, and explained that “Initially in our old mandate, we were doing the functional illiteracy programme for only persons 15years and above, however, this time, drop-outs are all supposed to be our target groups.”
Mr Asumadu was speaking at a durbar of Non-Formal Education Division held in Bolgatanga, in the Upper East Region.
He indicated that the Agency’s C.E.A programme, funded by the Government of Ghana was free at all levels, and targeted children from eight to 16years for transition to the Primary School level in the Ghana Education Service.
He said the CEA as part of its efforts, conducted remedial classes for those who had fallen out of the Free SHS programme to be roped onto the programme.
The Acting Director said the change of name from Non-Formal Education to CEA came with an Act of Parliament, Act 1055, insisting that there was the need for the Agency to sensitize staff on the Act.
He said the non-formal institution was very vibrant and had an enviable image from 2003 to 2007, which educated people to read, write, numerate and provided functional education for beneficiaries to support their communities and themselves.
Mr Asumadu said from 2008 to 2016, operations of the Non-Formal Education Division was a challenge as the government was the only institution that supported it’s operation, “So training and everything went down to the extent that some people forgot of our existence.”
He said government to this extent had to revamp Non-Formal Education from 2017, “We went through the process to have an Act passed in Parliament, and with the support of Cabinet, the CEA was established,” he added. The new mandate of the Complementary Education is therefore to provide a transitional point to bring informal learning to formal learning.
Mr Arimiyaw Braimah Adivila, the Acting Upper East Regional Coordinator of the CEA in his address, said the Agency had a total staff strength of 210 comprising 148 males and 62 females.
He said even though personnel from National Service Secretariat (NSS) and the Nations Builders Corp (NABco) were posted to complement their staff strength, the number of personnel posted were inadequate to spread across the Districts.
Mr Adivila indicated that at the beginning of 2019 and 2020 physical year, the Agency in the Region started the batch nine and 23 English and local languages classes in all Districts in the Region where a total learner population was 3,982 out of which 982 were males and 3000 females.
He noted that with the upsurge of the COVID-19 pandemic reported in the country in March 2020, literacy activities in the Region had slowed down.
Source: GNA