Government urged to partner Missions for improved education

Most Rev. Philip Naameh, Archbishop of the Tamale Diocese has attributed the fallen standards of education in the country to weak supervision and the authority's reluctance to hire and fire non performing teachers which was vested in the hands of Religious Educational Units.

He said formally, various Religious Educational Units had the mandate to even select the kind of teachers to teach the various educational institutions.

Most Rev. Naameh, who was speaking at a consultative forum in Tamale on Monday, said the Mission schools performed creditably than its other counter parts in the country.

The meeting under the theme “Government and Church Partnership towards Enhancing Education Service Delivery and Governance”, assembled faith based educational directors and officials of the Ghana Education Service to share ideas on how education can be improved in the region.

The Archbishop said, successive governments had politicized the educational system which was not in the best interest of the children who were the nation’s future.

“It is indeed good to reform the educational sector periodically due to global transformation and the job market but it was not right to skew the system to fit any parties political agenda at the expense of others”, he said.

For example, Most Rev. Naameh said, it got to a time that government wanted to even abolish the study of religious and moral education which educates children about morality and good practice of the nation’s culture.

He said any government who would not want to permit religious bodies to run and manage their educational institutions would be failing the nation.

He urged government to withstand pressures from some international groups to implement certain educational policies, as a condition of securing some funds.

Alhaji Abdula Yahaya Iddrisu, an Official from the Regional Education Office, said government was committed to restructuring the educational sector to ensure that the district assemblies were given the mandate to man the various schools.

Mr Halid Baba Yahaya, General Manager of Islamic Educational Unit, said government had hijacked the educational sector and was implementing policies without the input and concerns of other stakeholders

“Government has only given the Mission a narrow space to operate and this is not the best”, he said.**