Action Aid trains volunteer teachers for rural schools.

Bolgatanga, Sept. 10, GNA - One hundred and twenty senior secondary school (SSS) graduates have been trained and posted to schools that lack teachers in 62 communities in the Bawku West District.

The personnel, trained by Action Ghana (AAG) under the rural Education Volunteer Scheme (REV) would teach in primary schools and junior secondary schools that lack teachers.

Mr Sumaila Abdul-Rahman, Programme Manager, AAG, said this at a ceremony at the weekend to close a three-day workshop on Population and Development Advocacy in Bolgatanga.

He said for the past 10 years that AAG had worked in the Upper East Region it had helped some communities to put up school buildings but some of the schools were not patronised because of lack of teachers. Mr Abdul-Rahman said the REV programme was then undertaken to provide teachers.

He said the scheme was going on well and called on district assemblies and the Ghana Education Service to adopt it in order to provide adequate teachers for primary schools.

Mr Abdul-Rahman said AAG was prepared to assist any district assembly or community that took the initiative to train SSS leavers to help in their schools. Talking about the shepherd school programme Mr Abdul-Rahman said 1,144 children have been enrolled in shepherd schools in 84 communities in the Region.

He said shepherd schools were made flexible according to the desire of the community members, who are allowed to fix the time for classes to suit their children, who are shepherds.

Mr Abdul-Rahman said the first batch of such pupils was about to move on to the second year in the junior secondary school.