Ho, Jan. 28, GNA - The Ho Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Mawutor Goh, on Thursday called on communities in the Municipality to demonstrate collective interest in providing qualitative education for all children.
He said instead of each focusing on securing the best educational opportunities for his or her children. This is because it is only by such collective actions that the interest of children in general and the country as a whole could be secured.
Mr Goh made the call at the first Town-Hall meeting of stakeholders in education delivery in the Ho municipal area initiated by the Municipal Directorate of Education in collaboration with Education Quality for ALL (EQUALL), an NGO, and sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).
The meeting with the theme: "Quality Education in the Municipality", attracted about 200 stakeholders from the Parents-Teachers-Associations (PTAs), Head-Teachers Council (HTC), Circuit Supervisors (CS), NGO's, Assembly Members, Ghana Education Service Staff and Traditional Rulers among others. Mr Goh said just as no single individual could afford to educate his or child successfully without the involvement of the society, so also would government not be able to achieve its aim of education for all by the year 2013 alone. He therefore, underscored the need for all stakeholders including communities to play their complementary roles diligently through dialogue and mutual understanding to improve on the quality of education. Mr Victor Mensah, Municipal Education Director, said the stakeholders meeting was meant to introduce the EQUALL project to them because the times when teachers were left alone to bring up children academically were gone. "We've made efforts alone but do not achieve goals so we are now involving all stakeholders", he said.
EQUALL is a five-year USAID funded project designed to support the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MEYS) and the Ghana Education Service (GES) to achieve the basic education goals envisaged in the Ghana Education Strategic Plan (ESP) and the Global Education for All.
The four-year project to be implemented in the Ho Municipal area, South Tongu, Suhum, Bole and West Gonja districts, where it was piloted, seeks to increase educational opportunities to girls, improve the system of instruction and management accountability within the educational sector.
The project would expand access to quality education to girls who are unable to access formal education through child centred approach to making them proficient in the local languages in nine months. Under the project, primary school teachers would also acquire practical strategies to assist pupils in acquiring the techniques of reading with emphasis on the mother tongues. Through a District Incentive Grant, the project hoped to promote performance improvements by rewarding quality performance and change to facilitate management accountability in the educational sector.
