GII launches Africa Education Watch report on Ghana

Accra, Oct. 6, GNA - The Ghana Integrity Initiative, (GII) on Tuesday, launched the Africa Education Watch (AEW) project report on Ghana to coincide with the National Teachers Award ceremony. The report focused on three municipalities and three districts in the Upper East, Greater Accra and Ashanti regions.

The report found that the areas lacked basic school infrastructure like classrooms, blackboards, chairs and tables, noting that this situation had affected the performance of pupils.

The report indicated that only about 38 schools out of total of 60 monitored between 2007 and 2010 were well equipped with basic infrastructure.

Launching the report in Accra, Mr Vitus A. Azeem, GII Executive Secretary, said the Africa Education Watch (AEW) was a three-year programme (2007-2010) supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation through the Transparency International Secretariat (TIS). He said the overall goal of AEW was to contribute to improved access to quality of primary education and equity through a more effective use of resources.

Mr Azeem said the AEW in Ghana monitored cost and quality of education, cost of teaching and learning materials, implications of school feeding programme, teacher population and qualification, access to financial information, availability of school infrastructure, average class size and school governance systems.

He explained that based on the report the AEW recommended that education authorities provided more classrooms and furniture, opened new schools and trained more teachers to make up the current shortfall and provided standardized training for non-professional teachers.

The report also recommended the sensitization of parents, particularly, members of school management committees and Parent-Teacher Association executives, on their rights and roles in school management so as to enable them to participate more actively in school governance. It also suggested the training of SMC members in basic planning and financial management to contribute to school plans and track the application of school resources to reduce leakage and corruption. The AEW report identified the urgent need to provide a sustained training for school heads to ensure proper record keeping and efficient use of school resources.

"Head teachers who fail to keep proper records to ensure transparency and accountability in school financial management must be sanctioned," the report indicated.

GII said the intermediate outcomes of AEW included a creation of awareness among stakeholders, including NGOs and media, to ensure that they became more knowledgeable and concerned about waste, leakage, corruption and accountability mechanisms in primary education. It also sought to increase and prioritize demand for action on transparency and accountability in primary education and to empower education and finance officials to deal more proactively with transparency and accountability in primary education.