Catholic church launches ?150m education endowment fund

Accra (Greater Accra), 29th April ?99 ?

A National Education Forum, which is aimed at placing the country's educational system in the right perspective at the threshold of the new millennium, is to be held in the third quarter of the year.

Mr Kwabena Kyere, Deputy Minister of Education, said the forum would serve as an avenue for all stakeholders to make suggestions, comments and recommendations to help improve the educational system.

He was speaking at the launch of a 150m cedi education endowment fund by the Catholic Archdiocese of Accra.

The fund aims at assisting needy but brilliant children of Catholic parents, and rehabilitate or re-settle school drop-outs.

Mr Kyere stated that the country's annual budget allocation for education is between 30 and 35 per cent, adding that this is one of the highest in the world.

He observed that education is the single most vital element in combating poverty, empowering people, safeguarding children from exploitative labour and sexual exploitation.

It also promotes human rights and democracy, protects the environment, controls population growth and helps to achieve sustainable growth and development.

He said currently there are more than two million children in primary schools as compared to about 1.5 million at the beginning of the Education Reform Programme in 1986.

"Indeed, the FCUBE programme, while conforming to the United Nations Convention on the rights of the child, makes it a constitutional obligation for the government of Ghana to ensure that all children of school-going age are in school by the year 2005."

The deputy minister commended the Catholic Church for its remarkable strides in education, and more particularly for setting up the fund, and urged other religious bodies to institute similar funds for the benefit of needy children of school-going age.

In an address read for him, the Most Reverend Dominic Kodwo Andoh, Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Accra, pointed out that the most important asset of a nation is the quality of its manpower resources.

Archbishop Andoh, who is chairman of the 11-member Board of Trustees of the Fund, said education is the main instrument for raising and updating the quality of the manpower resources of the country. Investing in education, he said, was imperative.

"Cost-sharing has been long recognised, and it is for this reason and, indeed, to help groom the human person for the great tasks involved in national development that the Church has ever since its mission in Ghana, pre-occupied itself with building schools, hospitals, and vocational centres for the people."

GRi?/