NGO concerned over number of teachers

A children’s fund has called for government to place Early Childhood Development under the Ghana Education Service to enable more qualified teachers to be posted at ECD centres

Mrs Gifty Akosua Baka, Country Director of the Christian Children Fund of Canada (CCFC), said the current situation where ECD was placed under the Department of Social Welfare “brings a lot of challenges for teacher posting and so most of the ECD centres do not have the necessary qualified teachers to teach at that level.”

She was speaking at a ceremony to mark the African Union Day of the African Child, in Tamale, on Tuesday, organized by CCFC in collaboration with Northern Regional Department of Children, World Vision, ActionAid Ghana, and United Nation’s Children Fund (UNICEF) amongst other non-governmental organizations.

This year’s commemoration, which saw school pupils parade through principal streets of Tamale holding placards demanding equal access to quality education, was on the theme: “A Child Friendly, Quality, Free and Compulsory Education for all Children in Africa.”

Mrs Baka said ECD held an important place in the educational ladder and in developing the mental faculties of children, hence the need to restructure the ECD system to address the many challenges both on the ground and at the policy level.

She said statistics showed that only 34 per cent of teachers at ECD centres across the country were trained with a child-teacher ratio of 34 to one at the public ECD centres and 27 to one at the private ECD centres presenting a grim situation.

She said: “In communities in the Northern Region, getting teachers to teach at the 32 ECD centres continues to be a headache and a great disincentive for parents to send their children to centres.”

Mrs Baka also spoke about poor Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) results in the region and appealed to the government and other stakeholders to organize free mass remedial classes for those who failed the BECE to re-sit.

Alhaji Limuna Mohammed Muniru, Northern Regional Minister, whose speech was read on his behalf, assured that government would continue to provide free quality education and school uniforms to pupils and entreated parents to send their children to school.