GETFUND provide flats for GHANASS tutors

Koforidua, Dec. 10, GNA - The Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFUND) Secretariat is to provide a three storey teachers' flats for the Ghana Secondary School in Koforidua at a cost of 4.5 billion cedis next year to solve accommodation problem of tutors in the school. Mr Fosuaba A Mensah Banahene, Administrator of the Fund, announced this at the 64th Speech and Prize-giving Day of the school in Koforidua on Saturday and observed that one major problem facing most senior high schools was accommodation for teachers and that his outfit was doing everything possible to help solve some of them by next year. He commended the school on it academic performance over the years and attributed it to the commitment of the tutors. He expressed the belief that from what he has seen at the school "if the teachers get a better place to lay their heads they can do more than what they are doing today."

Speaking on the theme: " Holistic Education- a Challenge to Stakeholders", the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Highways Authority, Mr Eric Oduro Konadu said in the history of public education, critics had pointed out that the education of young persons should involved much more than moulding them into future workers or citizens. He said education was "the art of cultivating the moral, emotional, physical, physiological and spiritual dimensions of a developing child in a way that seeks to encompass and integrate multiple layers of meaning and experience rather than defining human possibilities narrowly".


Mr Konadu explained that holistic education was based on the premise that each person found meaning and purpose in life through connections to the community, the natural world and to the spiritual values such as compassion and peace.


He said holistic education was not done through an academic curriculum that condensed the world into instructional packages, but through direct engagement with the environment.


Mr Konadu said in holistic education, the teacher should be seen less as a person of authority who lead and controlled, but rather as a friend, a mentor, a facilitator or an experienced travelling companion. He said schools should be placed where students and adults worked towards a mutual goal, where open and honest communication was expected and differences between people must be respected and appreciated. Mr Konadu charged students to take their studies seriously and to shy away from drugs and other act of indiscipline, which could bring the hard won reputation of the school into disrepute.

"Be selective in choosing your companion so that your friend does not put you into doing things that eventually destroy your life," he cautioned.


Ms Rosemond Bampoe, Headmistress, said the school scored 90 per cent at this year's West African Secondary Schools Certificate Examinations and commended the tutors for their commitment and dedication.


She said the current population of the school stood at 1,539 made up of 760 boys and 779 girls.


Prizes were awarded to deserving students and staff.