97% basic school enrolment achieved – Mahama

President John Mahama has said his government has achieved 97% enrolment of pupils into basic schools.

Touching on the highlights of the NDC’s manifesto for the December 7 elections, Mr Mahama said the remaining 3% are being captured under the complementary school enrolment programme.

He said his government has generally increased enrolment to 9 million in the 2016 academic year, adding that the government increased educational facilities by about 26 percent, largely eliminated the shift system and distributed about 100 million exercise books to pupils.

Mr Mahama also said 12,500,000 English and Mathematics text books were distributed in his first term.

According to him, the school feeding programme increased to 1.7 million in 2014.

As far as gendder parity in education is concerned, Mr Mahama, who is seeking a second term in office said “for every boy going to school, there is a girl going to school.”

He promised that his government will finish all the 200 promised Community Day Senior High Schools in his second term explaining that 123 are at different stages of completion.

Mr Mahama said university enrolment under his tenure has increased by 7.1% under his tenure while polytechnic enrolment shot up by 3.4% and 63.8% for the 38 colleges of education in the country.

Mr Mahama also said his government has been able to reduce teacher absenteeism from 23% to 9.3 %. He promised that his government intends eliminating schools under trees by 2021 by which he would have ended his second term should he win the December polls.

The government, Mr Mahama said is investing more than $100 million into technical and vocational training.

He said his government also intends reviewing and increasing the capitation grant by 100 percent and also pilot the use of electronic textbooks in senior high schools. “Students will receive tablets that have all their core subjects on the tablet. If the pilot is successful, the programme shall be expanded,” Mr Mahama added.

He also promised that his government, in his second term, should the NDC win the polls, will appoint a Deputy Minister in charge of Technical and Vocational Training for to increase supervision.