School For Life Plans Strategy To Improve Quality Education In Deprived Regions

School for Life (SFL), a nongovernmental organization in the Northern Region, has laid out a five year (2012-2018) strategic plan it says will contribute to the overall strategic goal and mission of improving access to quality education in Ghana and at the same time ensure civil society participation in education is strengthened.

The first SFL strategic priority area is education advocacy and policy change, the second is civil society coordination and participating, the third is delivery, demonstrating and promoting compulsory basic education (CBE), the fourth is learning, development and evidence base and the fifth is organizational capacity development.

In the first place, SFL intends to advocate for pro-poor policies and change in education, targeting access to relevant quality basic education, and promote and support their implementation.

To this end, SFL expects the approval of the CBE policy by the Ministry of Education and enacted by parliament. In addition, SFL wants to create public awareness of the structural barriers in education, the existence of the CBE policy and its implementation. Furthermore, it expects an increased allocation of trained teachers, especially female teachers, to deprived communities of the country.

School for Life also intends to provide leadership in promoting civil society groups participation in policy/decision making, in CBE implementation and in improving coordination and harmonization among civil society organizations and initiatives for improved accountability and influence.

Not only does SFL intends to provide leadership but also deliver, demonstrate and promote flexible and complementary basic education models adapted to the situation and the needs of the hardest-to-reach areas and marginalized out of school children of Ghana, particularly in Northern, Upper East, Upper West, and other deprived regions/districts in the country.

Equally importantly, SFL wants to develop and provide evidence, capacity building and technical support for appropriate pedagogic approaches, methods and material to be adopted and applied by the formal primary education system in order to improve access, relevance and quality teaching and learning in formal schools in Ghana and beyond.

Lastly, SFL intends to strengthen its internal capacity to provide strategic leadership and direction in the CBE Alliance, to improve its relationship-building and advocacy approaches, and to document and make known its results, components and values.

This dimension includes a series of capacities related to project management, leadership, technical skills and knowledge in the topics which form the content of School for Life's Strategic Plans.

SFL started in 1995, springing from cooperation on rural community development between the Northern Region based civil society organizations, Ghana Development Communities Association (GDCA), and a Danish NGO, Ghana Friends Groups.