Falling education standard in rural areas

... due to lack of infrastructure
Obawale, (E/R), June, 28, GNA-Mrs. Francisca Borkor Bortey, Eastern Regional chairman of the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), on Friday attributed falling standards of education in rural areas to lack of infrastructure.

She has therefore proposed the setting up of a national rural education infrastructure fund to speed up the rate of development of rural education in the country.

Mrs Bortey made the proposal at the launch of this year's annual Global Action Week on Education Celebration at Obawale in the Yilo Krobo District.

This year's event, which was under the theme; "quality education to end exclusion", brought together more than 700 school children and teachers from the basic level within the district.

Mrs Bortey also identified lack of incentives to teachers, especially those who accept postings to rural areas as another problem hampering the educational sector and urged government to institute a special incentive package for them. She said Ghana's efforts to achieve the targets of Universal Primary Enrolment and Completion by 2015 as enshrined in the Education for All Protocol, for, which Ghana was a signatory continued to be of tremendous

concern to the coalition and its partners. Mrs. Bortey said it was against that background that the coalition was collaborating with the Ministry of Education Science and Sports, Ghana Education Service (GES), and the Parliamentary Select Committee on Education to ensure that the country achieved the target. She said the current deficit of 24,000 teachers could prove unrealistic if government did not remove admission quotas on teacher training colleges and make rural teaching attractive.

She commended the government for supplementing teacher shortages with community education teaching assistants under the National Youth Employment Programme, and described it as a step in the right direction. Mrs. Bortey said two years after the introduction of the School Feeding Programme on pilot basis; the time was ripe to expand it to all public schools.

Mr. Gladstone Tetteh, GNECC zonal coordinator for the Krobo area, on his part said the coalition was made up of 225 civil society organizations with the basic objective of promoting good quality basic education for all.

He gave the assurance that the coalition would continue to collaborate with all stake holders to ensure quality education for rural children.