Severe congestion due to inadequate classrooms has become a major hurdle to effective academic work at the Asempaneye Basic School in the Asante-Akim South District.

The school, serving a cluster of cocoa settler farming communities including Aboaboso, Abokyekrom, Kwanware and Yaw-Barimah, has only three classrooms for its six classes.

This has resulted in a situation where children at different stages of the education ladder are forced to sit in the same classroom as their teachers take turns to teach them.

The head teacher, Mr Agyei Yeboah, said this was not helpful to smooth teaching and learning.

“It is completely unacceptable and that things would have to change.”

He told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that the other worry was that the structure for the classrooms “is weak and in bad shape”.

The block is not just unsuitable but poses danger to both the kids and the teachers and he appealed to the district assembly to act with some urgency to build a new block of classrooms for the school, which has a population of 180 children.

Every effort must be made to provide a more academically-friendly environment for them.

Reporters of the GNA had visited the community under STAR-Ghana’s media auditing and tracking of development projects, an initiative launched to shine a spotlight on how government’s resources were helping to transform the lives of the people, particularly those in rural communities.

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

Mr Yeboah said despite the harsh conditions, the teachers were determined to give it their all to help give the children a better future.

The Circuit Supervisor for the area, Mr Francis Poure, shared the sentiments expressed by the head teacher and described the state of affairs as awful.

He said he had already met the community leaders and they had accepted to take steps to construct additional classrooms through self-help and to fix the deterioration of the existing structure.

He said the expectation was that the assembly would give every necessary support to the people to carry through the project.