Stakeholders asked to support decentralisation

Dr Callistus Mahama, the Head of the Local Government Service, on Wednesday appealed to stakeholders to support the integration of education into the decentralisation concept.

He said education and health were conspicuously missing in the Local Government Act 462, and the infusion of the two, especially education, would give realistic meaning to implementation of educational reform policies.

Dr Mahama made the appeal in Sunyani when speaking at the opening of a stakeholder consultation on the decentralisation of education and collect inputs into the 2015 Education Draft Bill.

Organised by the Ministry of Education with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the programme is being attended by representatives from the Ghana Education Service, District/Municipal Assemblies, and Civil Society Organisations, among other institutions in the Brong-Ahafo and Ashanti regions.

Dr Mahama explained that since 2012, the Government and development partners had stepped up proactive measures to reform the national education system.

He said grassroots participation in the formulation and implementation of education policies and programmes would, in a long term, help find solutions to challenges in the sector.

Dr Mahama said decentralisation played a critical role and remained a pre-requisite tool in facilitating accelerated national development.

He said the benefits in decentralising education far outweighed the disadvantages, and appealed to stakeholders to make meaningful inputs into the draft bill.

Mr Eric Opoku, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Minister, asked the participants to contribute effectively by making progressive inputs into the bill.

Professor Kwamena Ahwoi, a local government expert and lecturer at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, said the objective of the bill was to provide a decentralised pre-tertiary education system.

The facilitators, Prof Ahwoi and Mrs Estelle Appia, a consultant, would take the participants through the “Background and Rationale of the Education Sector Decentralisation and the Draft Education Sector Decentralisation Bill.”