Fill vacant District Director of Education positions – DCE

Mr James Gunu, Akatsi-North District Chief Executive (DCE), has entreated authorities of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to fill the long standing vacant headship positions at the district directorates across the Volta Region.

He was speaking at a ceremony on Monday at Ave-Dakpa to welcome a group of 51 students of the EP University College in Ho, for a 30-day voluntary teaching service in schools in the district.

Mr. Gunu said the absence of substantive heads at the district, including Akatsi-North, could dampen efforts of raising standards.

He expressed regret that some ineptitude was beginning to creep into the education directorate in his area after a period of hard work.

Mr Gunu recalled that when he assumed office in the infant district in 2012, he took measures to raise logistic support for the educational sector.

He said some of the areas tackled were poor teacher supervision, lack of equipment, teacher absenteeism, parental irresponsibility and huge pupil-teacher ratio gap.

“Our efforts paid off in the 2014 BECE with no school scoring zero per cent, general percentage pass moved to 38 per cent, from 18per cent in 2013, during which three schools scored zero per cent, with only 65, out of the 273 candidates presented qualifying to enter second cycle school,” the DCE said.

“I am not seeing the same level of commitment we started with earlier and there is the fear of this reversing the clock backwards”, Mr Gunu lamented, warning that such roll back of “our education fortunes will not be tolerated”.

Handing over the students to the education authorities, he asked that any community not ready to provide accommodation and other levels of comfort for the volunteers must not be considered in the distribution.

Mr Gunu commended the students for accepting to come to the district.

Mr. Justice Habib, the Immediate Past District Director of Education, commended the group for their response and asked them to abide by the rules and regulations.

He asked them to confer with their heads of schools over challenges and take orientation courses seriously.

The volunteer service, which begun last year, was started based on an appeal by the DCE at function of the University College in Ho. It is to help raise standards in the area.