Stakeholders in education have called on government to prioritize basic education by allocating more resources in terms of teaching and learning materials, infrastructure and teachers to the sector.
The stakeholders, who stated this in a communique issued in Tamale on Tuesday by School for Life (SfL), a non-governmental organization, said this would promote quality education at the basic level to ensure a solid foundation for children to progress academically.
The communique was developed after a day’s colloquium organized by SfL in Tamale on October 14, this year on the theme: “Enhancing Access to Quality Basic Education for Sustainable National Development” and was attended by representatives from public sector and some civil society organizations (CSO) focusing on education.
The communique recommended that libraries be stocked to meet the current needs of students and the general public, adding, teachers’ resource centres should be revitalised to serve their purpose such as researching into modern teaching methodologies, development of teaching and learning materials and providing in-service training to teachers.
It called on teacher unions such as the Ghana National Association of Teachers, and the National Association of Graduate Teachers to extend their focus beyond teacher welfare to take up issues of professional standards and ethics to promote quality education.
It also called on government to among other changes, review the curriculum of teacher training to bridge the gap between theory and practice, provide quality material and financial resources, and ensure accountability in the management of available resources.
The communique further recommended the need to ensure bottom-up change in education by involving all stakeholders including CSOs, parents, children, and traditional rulers in policy formulation and implementation.
It called for enforcement of policies whiles systems made to work to ensure that resources put into education yielded the desired results, adding, the Ghana Education Service (GES) should involve traditional rulers in monitoring learning outcomes in schools within their localities to augment the work of circuit supervisors and to promote community ownership of the schools.
It also underscored the need to intensify oral training at the basic level with emphasis on the mother tongue as well as redesigning and enforcing basic level education that built learners’ ability on numeracy, literacy and basic life skills.
It called for re-assessing of the role of technology in the country’s educational system to achieve her dream of a technology-driven economy.
