More Islamic teachers in Northern Region schools

Tamale, Jan. 28, GNA - There are about 700 Islamic teachers teaching in basic schools in the Northern Region in spite of the few Islamic schools in the region.

At the primary level, as many as 14 Islamic teachers can be found in some schools with only six classrooms, while only three teachers are left to handle the academic subjects.

Mr Chikpah Demuyakor, Northern Regional Director of Education made this observation when he addressed the opening of a two-day national workshop of Regional Managers of the Islamic Education Unit in Tamale on Thursday.

The Muslim Relief Association of Ghana (MURAG) organised the forum on the theme: "Resource Mobilisation for Effective Management, Supervision and Educational Development in Secular Islamic Schools".

Mr Demuyakor expressed concern about the attitude of Muslim parents who insist that their children attend only Koranic schools. He said the major problems facing the education of the Muslim child was the tendency of their disabled parents to use them as "walking sticks" to solicit alms on the streets instead of allowing them to attend school.

He suggested that parents who have more than one child could alternate them so that one could guide the parent to the streets in the morning, while the other takes over in the afternoon, depending on their school schedule.

Mr Demuyakor urged managers of the Islamic Education Unit to ensure the judicious use of their human resource to bring quality education into their schools.

The Regional Director announced that in the next two years, an Islamic Training College would be established at Yendi to train teachers for the secular Islamic schools.

Hajia Fati Seid, Acting National Manager of the Islamic Education Unit mentioned the lack of proper office accommodation and transportation as some of the problems facing the unit.

She said, for instance, all the regional offices of the unit were in rented premises and therefore, at the mercy of landlords, who had resorted to arbitrary rent increases.

She said apart from the Ashanti regional manager of the unit, neither of the other regional managers had any means of transport for effective supervision of schools, nor duty post accommodation.

"This, in a way is affecting the transfers of our managers whose management skills may be needed outside their regions of origin", she said.

She commended MURAG for sponsoring the workshop and expressed the hope that, with time, other Islamic NGOs would emulate the association to bring the level of education in the Islamic schools at par with those in the secular educational institutions.