Regional News of Monday, 20 October 2014

Source: GNA

Afigya-Kwabre to supply 7,000 desks to schools

The Afigya-Kwabre District Assembly is to supply over 7,000 desks to basic schools across the area before the end of the year, to ease the financial pressure on parents.

Mr. Kwaku Oppong-Kyekyeku Kaakyire, the District Chief Executive (DCE), said adequate budget had been made towards this.

The target is to get all newly-built classrooms the full complement of furniture to allow for smooth teaching and learning.

He told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the situation where kids carried chairs and tables to school must be a thing of the past.

Mr. Oppong-Kyekyeku said he had already hosted talks with heads of the basic schools on ways of creating friendly classroom environment to enhance performance.

Reporters of the nation’s wire service had visited the district under STAR-Ghana’s sponsored media auditing and tracking of development projects, an initiative launched to put the spotlight on how government’s resources were helping to transform the lives of the people, particularly the rural population.

The goal is to aid transparency, promote accountability and good local governance.

He said education is a key priority of the assembly and therefore it would do all it could from its limited resources to promote access and quality.

The Assembly within the last three years had built over 25 new classrooms and refurbished a number of old structures.

Mr Oppong-Kyekyeku spoke of the need to strengthen supervision in the schools to maintain discipline and effective use of the contact hours.

It is also important to take good care of school property – furniture, teaching and learning materials, to save the Assembly the cost of regularly replacing these.

Ms Christiana Abrafi Ampeh, the District Director of Education, hailed the Assembly’s support and rallied teachers to work with passion and zeal to raise academic performance.

Absenteeism, laziness and other excuses for non-performance would not be accepted, she said.