Government Urged To Revamp Public Schools

The Country Director of Compassion International-Ghana, Mr Padmore Baffour Agyapong, has reiterated the call on the government and other stakeholders in education to put in place measures to revamp public schools for quality education.

Mr Agyapong said the quality of education in public schools, especially at the basic level, had declined over the last 20 years, frustrating many parents who have therefore sent their children to private schools.

Instead of sending their children to public schools, where they believe the children would fail, he said the parents rather kept the children at home thereby increasing the dropout rate.

Speaking at the celebration of the 2012 African Union Day of the African Child in Cape Coast recently, Mr Agyapong described as very disturbing the continuous failure of about 57 per cent of children at the Basic Education Certificate Examination over the last two years.

The day is celebrated by the African Union to mark the Soweto shooting incident in 1976 during a demonstration by black South African schoolchildren to demand quality education and their right to be taught in their own language.

It is on the theme “The rights of children with disabilities: the duty to protect, respect, promote and fulfill”.

He said Compassion International-Ghana had over the last five years invested heavily in the education of children in public schools in the Greater Accra, Central and the Eastern regions but the results had not been encouraging.

He said the organisation was providing support for 39,366 children in the three regions, and that plans had been put in place to expand its support to the Volta and the Eastern regions next year.

A Principal State Attorney, Mrs Hannah Spencer Taylor, commended Compassion International-Ghana for making child education its priority, and called for support for such laudable ideas to equip children with knowledge and skills for their sustained livelihood.