USAID And UNICEF Support Quality Education In Ghana

The USAID/Ghana Mission Director, Mr. James A. Bever, and UNICEF Country Representative for Ghana, Ms. Susan Namondo Ngongi, signed an agreement on January 22, 2015 that reinforces USAID's and UNICEF's partnership with the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service to improve the quality of education in Ghana. Through the agreement, USAID will provide UNICEF with $14.5 million to expand its work on improving learning outcomes and fostering more inclusive basic education in Ghana.

UNICEF is supporting the Ghana Education Service to pilot a new integrated smart phone platform for collecting School Report Card information in 14 districts. A major benefit of the new application is the ability to collect data about schools from various system stakeholders, including community members, teachers and circuit supervisors, and return aggregated data in a quick and efficient manner. USAID's financial support will help UNICEF to strategically expand this work with the aim of scaling up this promising model for school monitoring across the country.

USAID, through UNICEF, will support the printing and nationwide distribution of teaching and learning materials for kindergarten, as well as the scaling up of UNICEF's “hanging library” initiative -- portable libraries that make 50 English and local language stories available to primary classrooms in disadvantaged areas. In addition, with the support of USAID, UNICEF will conduct a national campaign to raise awareness among parents about the potential contributions of disabled children to society through the development and distribution of prototype materials geared at educators and children with special needs.

The American people, through USAID, have made a significant investment in Ghanaian education with a focus on improving reading performance in primary schools. USAID's financial contribution to UNICEF will complement USAID's $170 million Partnership for Education Project, which aims to improve reading instruction, strengthen education systems, and enhance government accountability in education.

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