Eleven billion cedis made available for 60 school projects

Pepedan (Ash), March 16, GNA - A total of 11.7 billion cedis had been made available towards 60 school projects in 17 selected districts under Quality Improvement in Primary Schools (QUIPS) programme sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

These are made up of 47 classroom blocks and 13 teachers' quarters. Seventy-five percent of the money representing 8,775,000,000 cedis was provided by the USAID with the district assemblies and beneficiary communities contributing the remaining 2,925,000,000 cedis.

Mr Stephen Yaw Manu, Director, Co-operative Agreement of the Programme, announced this at the inauguration of four of such projects, which were completed in the Amansie East district.

The four projects were a six-classroom block each with office and store at Ntinanko, Biribiwomang and Nsutem and a teacher's quarters at Pepedan.

The four projects cost a total of 1.05 billion cedis out of which the assembly paid 203.4 million cedis while the local communities contributed 69 million cedis.

Mr Manu said with the provision of the infrastructure, it was expected that people in the communities would see to it that all children of school going age were not only enrolled, but also retained in the schools.

He tasked the assembly and the communities to maintain the projects and show deep sense of ownership for them.

Mr Richard Aboagye, the District Chief Executive, expressed concern about the poor performance of pupils in major certificate examinations in spite of the huge resources being invested into education in the area.

"The statistics on teachers population indicate a fair distribution of teachers, yet the expected results are not forthcoming". Mr Aboagye said to help improve the situation it was necessary to promote effective co-operation and collaboration among the stakeholders of education at all levels in the district.

Mr D.K. Obeng, the District Director of Education said his outfit would improve on its supervisory and monitoring roles to make sure that teachers perform.