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Road Safety Commission engages GES on teaching of road safety in schools

By Myjoyonline.com
General News Road Safety Commission engages GES on teaching of road safety in schools
JUL 4, 2012 LISTEN

The National Road Safety Commission (NRSC) has met with officials of the Ghana Education Service (GES) over the Commission's mandate to “undertake nationwide road safety education and encourage the development of road safety education as part of the curriculum and the training of teachers in road safety”

In partial fulfillment of this mandate, the NRSC has since 2011 developed and launched Road Safety textbooks for basic schools and their Teacher's Manuals to facilitate the process.

The meeting was to enable the Commission appraise the GES with the extent of the road safety problem relative to children of school going age, discuss opportunities in the areas of building capacity for teachers to teach road safety, accessibility of the books to the students and general road safety improvement.

Ing. (Mrs.) May-Obiri Yeboah, Director of Planning & Programmes of the NRSC says, “with a nationwide staff strength of about 80 it will be near impossible to reach the over 18,000 basic schools at regular intervals to discuss road safety, that is why we value this collaboration to reach out to a very critical group at a tender age with the support of the school as a change agent”

Mr. Charles E. Otu, Head of the Curriculum, Research and Development Division and Mrs. Doris Gyedu Nuako, Director of Basic School Division of the G.E.S who represented the Director General of the GES assured the Commission that it was possible to engage accredited publishers in mainstreaming the ideas embodied in the road safety textbooks into their publications and also reach out to teachers during all in service training programmes while short to medium plans are made to incorporate road safety into the training of teachers.

Pedestrian deaths account for 42% of all road traffic deaths out of which 25% are children-related while 56% of children get killed crossing the road as 54% of children get killed on highways traversing village settlements.

The meeting agreed that, the state of school buses that convey school children to and from school has emerged as a road safety issue and will require the collaborative effort of GES, NRSC, schools and their various PTA's to help manage.

The meeting which was in line with the National Road Safety Action Plans was the third after similar engagements with some strategic partners like religious leaders and representatives of political parties.


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