Churches Should Mount Crusade On Child Education - Priest

Cape Coast (Central Region), 10 Nov. A Reverend Minister of the Catholic Archdiocese of Cape Coast, Father Mathias Nketia, has stressed the need for churches to mount a vigorous crusade on the need for parents to send their children to school. He said the decline in child education in the Central Region was becoming alarming and all efforts should be made to arrest the downward trend. Fr. Nketia was contributing to a day's seminar organized by the Central Regional Co-ordinating Council, the Ghana Education Service and the Ghana National Commission on Children on the theme ''The state of child education in the Central Region'' at the Cape Coast Town Hall today. The seminar was attended by parents, teachers, district chief executives and presiding members, opinion leaders and lecturers to brainstorm on a programme of action to guide an integrated regional development plan. He said although the churches had been doing a lot about child education, there was the need for them to do more by using money realized from the pulpit on child education. Rev Fr. Nketia lashed out at fathers who refuse to look after their children, describing this as immoral. Dr. D.J. Opare, a lecturer of the University of Cape Coast, blamed both parents and teachers for the falling standard of education. Dr. Opare noted that some teachers lacked the substantive knowledge and appropriate method to impart knowledge to children. He stressed the need for effective supervision and monitoring to ensure that teachers who need retraining are given the opportunity to do so. Mr. Opare said textbooks must be made available in time and in large quantities. Professor D.K. Fobih, Dean of the Faculty of Education, asked heads of basic education schools to create a vision or image for their schools based on academic achievement in English and Mathematics for a start. He stressed the need to adopt a philosophy that realizes the importance of education to ''our human resource development, particularly the talent of our young ones''.