Stakeholders urge GES to post trained teachers rural areas

Stakeholders in education have called on the Ghana Education Service (GES) to post more trained teachers to operational areas of the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority Millennium Villages Project (SADA-MVP).

They made the call at separate fora organized at Fumbisi in the Builsa South District and Walewale in the West Mamprusi District of the Northern Region.

The fora, organized by the SADA-MVP in collaboration with the two district assemblies, were aimed at discussing progress made so far by the project in the two districts.

The SADA-MVP started in 2012 and is being implemented in 35 communities in Builsa South District in the Upper East Region, West Mamprusi and Mamprugu Mauduri districts in the Northern Region where it is intervening in the areas of education, health, agribusiness, and infrastructure.

The stakeholders expressed regret at the small numbers of trained teachers in the 20 clusters school in the operational areas.

They said the few trained teachers posted to the area also exhibited absenteeism and lateness to school and that was affecting the quality of teaching and learning.

Whilst commending the SADA-MVP for facilitating the recruitment of untrained teachers popularly called pupils teachers to fill in the gaps created by the inadequate number of trained teachers, it was suggested that as part of the measures to address the phenomenon, there was the urgent need for the GES to embark upon a decongestion exercise of teachers in the district capitals of Fumbisi and Walewale and to redeploy them to the deprived schools in the rest of the district including the SADA-MVP operational areas.

Mr Francis Avonsige, the Coordinator of SADA-MVP in charge of Education, mentioned that through the monitoring activities of the Project in collaboration with the district offices of GES in Walewale and Fumbisi, it had become clear that reading was still a major challenge among pupils in the schools being supported by the Project.

“Primary three pupils cannot even recognize alphabets. Reading makes the child to understand what is happening in the classroom and outside”, he said.

SADA-MVP has facilitated the construction and renovation of Teacher accommodation and yet teachers prefer staying at Fumbisi and Sandema and Walewale and attending school to teach, he added.

He appealed to the District Directors of Education, Parent/Teacher Associations and School Management Committee to play their roles very well to help address the canker of teacher absenteeism which was affecting the performance of the children,

He gave the assurance that the project would by September this year purchase 2,000 dual desks for kindergarten pupils in the 20 schools being supported by SADA-MVP.

There are also plans to support these schools with Teaching and Learning Materials (TLMs) such as exercise books, English, Mathematics and Science books.

Mr David Sumbo, the Team Leader of SADA-MVP, reiterated the need for the stakeholders to map out pragmatic strategies to sustain the project when it ends in December 2016.