Osafo-Maafo urges more support for basic schools

Cape Coast, April 24, GNA - Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the Minister of Education and Sports, on Monday called on old students not to focus on assisting only senior secondary schools they attended but also the basic schools to enable them perform better.

He noted with concern that whereas many of the basic schools in the country were in deplorable states due to the lack of regular maintenance, old boys were rehabilitating and providing furniture and other logistics to the SSS and called for a shift in such assistance. Mr Osafo-Maafo made the call when he visited some centres for the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in Cape Coast.

He inspected rehabilitation work at the Philip Quaicoe Boys' School, the first primary school to be established in the country. A total of 35,567 candidates, including 14 with hearing impairments from the Cape Coast School for the Deaf, are taking part in the examination in the region, with 2,955 of them sitting in the municipality.

When he visited the Adisadel College centre, the minister was told that it had 576 candidates from 13 schools of which three, two girls and one boy, had failed to turn up, while at the Mfantsipim School centre with 389 candidates from 12 schools, one girl was reported absent due to pregnancy.

Another female candidate was reported absent also due to pregnancy at the Holy Child School centre while seven others out of the 416 candidates were also absent. One of them was said to have travelled outside the country, and the remaining six, failed to attend school after registering for the examination.

Mr Osafo-Maafo called on the students to take the examination seriously, because according to him, "it formed the basic fundamentals of your life and education".