Report indicate increase in pupil teachers in public schools

Koforidua, Aug. 16, GNA - A World Fit for Children (WFFC) report on education in Ghana, has revealed that the percentage of untrained teachers has increased from 26 to 38 percent in the last five years in the public schools.

The report attributed the situation to increases in enrolment in public schools.

The report, which is an assessment of a 10- year development goals and targets, set by world leaders at a UN special session on children, reflects the challenges related to the rapid rise of enrolment in schools as a result of increased resources being invested in the education sector.

It mentioned the abolition of school fees in the form of the capitation grant scheme nationwide, the initial piloting of the school feeding programme and the active implementation of policies, which together had removed some barriers to access to education.

The report indicated that enrolment at kindergartens (KG) in public schools had doubled from approximately 550,000 in 2001/2002 to 1,105,779 in 2006/2007, while primary enrolment had increased from 2.5 million pupils to almost 3.5 million, representing an increase of 35 percent in the same period.

The Junior High School enrolment had also increased from 890,000 in 2001/2002 to 1,135,300 in 2006/2007 and female national enrolment rate stood at 49.7, while that for the males was at 51.7 percent as at 2006/2007.

Mr Sylvester Kyei Gyamfi of the Information Research and Advocacy Division (IRAD) of the Ministry of Women and Children (MOWAC), who led a discussion on the report with stakeholders in Koforidua on Thursday, said although tremendous improvement had been recorded, more needed to be done.

He said that despite the indication that some barriers had been removed from access to education in Ghana based on available population projections and education indicators, an estimated 800,000 children of primary school going age were not in school.

Mrs Florence Ayisi-Quartey, of the IRAD of MOWAC, who also called for more action on education by stakeholders, said the report was based on the first five years of implementation of the goals of the UN session on Children from 2002 to 2012.

She explained that the agreement at the session also included that after the first five years, an assessment of the implementation of the goals should be conducted by every member country to see how far it was progressing and fill the gaps, where they were lacking behind. Nana Frempong Ware, of the Centre for National Culture said the high increase in enrolment that had resulted in increase of pupil teachers, confirmed the need for more teacher training colleges to produce more teachers.

He said even though government had made efforts to increase the number of teachers in response to the surge of enrolment, it was doing so within the limited capacity of teacher training colleges, and called for the need for the establishment of more training colleges.