Work hard to address dwindling education - Minister

Alhaji Limuna Mohammed-Muniru, Northern Regional Minister, on Thursday appealed to stakeholders in the education sector to work assiduously to ensure that the continuous dwindling of education in the north was addressed to facilitate the needed development.

He said no nation could boast of meaningful development without proper educational systems saying, “Commitment, hard work and the love for nation-building are the tenets needed to address the country’s weak educational system”.

Alhaji Mohammed-Muniru made the appeal in Tamale, when he inaugurated a 15-member education steering committee put in place by the Northern Regional Coordinating Council (NRCC), tasked with the responsibility to investigate the main problems contributing to the continuous falling of educational standards in the Northern Region, and to give recommendations as to how to address the problem.

The NRCC constituted the committee dubbed: “Education sector working group for the Northern Region” in response to an education forum organised last April, which discussed issues of the fallen standards of education and one of the recommendations was a committee to check and address the problem.

The Complimentary Basic Education (CBE) alliance of NGOs in the Northern Region with funding from IBIS and the School for Life (SfL), which supported the April education forum is supporting the work of the committee aimed at ensuring improvement in educational standards in the area.

Alhaji Mohammed-Muniru said the committee was not going to take over the work of already existing institutional structures but would work in collaboration with such structures to achieve the desired results to ensure that teachers put up their best to transform education in the area.

He pledged his personal support and monitoring of the work of the committee and advised members of the committee, drawn from experienced educationists and some individuals working with NGOs who are in education, to strive hard to change education in the Region.

Mr Paul Apanga, Northern Regional Director of Education in a speech read on his behalf advised head teachers not to leave textbooks on the shelves instead of their intended purpose, which according to him contributed to the fallen standards of education.

He said overstaffing at the basic level in the urban and peri-urban centres, inadequate supply of trained teachers and textbooks and infrastructure for public Kindergartens continue to be a challenge to education in the Northern Region.

He said efforts were being made to punish teachers who abandon their posts for their personal businesses, while attempts were also underway to organise regular quiz competitions among schools and circuits so as to improve teaching and learning.

Mr Issah Abah, a former District Chief Executive (DCE) for Cheriponi, chairing the committee, said the committee would not embark on witch-hunting but would work closely with the existing education structures to achieve the needed results.