Complementary Basic Education contributes to school enrollment - Directors

By Samuel Akapule, GNA
Tongo(UE), March 26, GNA - Many school going- age children would have been out of school without the implementation of the Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme, Directors of Education in the Upper East Region have said.

The programme which begun in the year 2013 in the Talensi, Bongo, Bawku and Pusiga Districts in the Upper East Region and Kariga District in the Northern Region, had developed strategies to register children of school-going age in communities and mainstream them into the formal education system.

This came to light when Afrikids Ghana, a Child focused NGO and one of the implementing agents of the programme, undertook separate monitoring visits to the Talensi and the Nabdam Districts to see how the project was fairing.

Giving an account of the programme implementation status in the Talensi District, the District Director of Education for the area, Mrs Stephanie Mosore, said the programme in the year 2015 and 2016 was able to register 441 and 399 children of school going- age respectively, from the communities and mainstreamed them into the formal education system.

She said plans were far advanced to mainstream another batch of 325 of the beneficiaries who were currently undergoing literacy, numeracy and life skills classes organised by trained facilitators to be mainstreamed into formal education.

Mrs Mosore said the beneficiaries of the programme were performing better than those who entered directly into the formal schooling system and indicated that there were still some of them in some of the communities who were not in school.

The District Director of the Bongo District, Mr Duncan Nsoh, who expressed happiness about the programme in the District, said it was complementing the efforts of the Directorate to ensure that no children of school going age were left out of school.

Mr Edward Asakeya, the Acting CBE Coordinator for Afrikids Ghana, attributed the success story of the project to the intensive training programme of the facilitators offered by the project, the numeracy, literacy and life skills teaching methodology, the high level of collaboration between the Ghana Education Service, Teachers, School Management Committees, Local Committees, Chiefs and Assembly members among others.

The External Affairs Manager of Afrikids Ghana, Mr Raymond Ayine explained that the programme which was funded with support from the UK Government through its Department for International Development (DFID) seeks to help the disadvantaged children attain basic numeracy and literacy skills so they could be integrated into the mainstream school and complete a full cycle of primary education.

'Over a period of just nine months, children aged 8-14 who are not in school are taught basic literacy, numeracy and life skills in their mother tongue using accelerated literacy strategies contextualised to their community. They are then ready to join primary school for the first time.' he said.

The External Affairs Manager said the CBE programme was key to Ghana's Education Strategic Plan 2010-2020 which included functional literacy for out of school children and commended the stakeholders for working hard together to make the project realise its aims and objectives.

Most of the beneficiary communities visited were seen demonstrating their acquired skills in Numeracy, Literacy and Life Skills they obtained from their facilitators.

GNA