7000 Out-of-school children enrolled in school

Over 7000 out-of-school children in 11 districts of three regions in the country have been enrolled in school.

The children, whose ages ranged between eight to 16 years old, were made up of those who had never attended school before and those who attended but had dropped out not less than 12 months.

The return of the children to school formed part of an ongoing project started in 2022 and would end in 2026 dubbed, Ghana Education Outcomes Project (GEOP) that is being implemented by Plan International Ghana with funding from the World Bank through the Ministry of Education and also supported by Canada National Office.

The Manager of Southern Programme Influencing and Impact Area (SPIIA) of Plan International Ghana, Mathias Gangana, disclosed this at Ho in the Volta Region during a three-day media training programme organised by Plan International Ghana to equip journalists with comprehensive knowledge of their projects and initiatives to enable them to advocate powerfully for most vulnerable children.

Districts

He said the children, who were now at various stages in basic school were from six districts in North East Region; four districts in Savannah Region and one district from Bono East Region.

Mr Gangana explained that before the children were enrolled in a formal class, Plan International Ghana recruited volunteer teachers from the communities who took them through literacy and mathematics for nine months using an abridged lower primary curriculum in their local languages.

After the nine months, he said, an assessment was done for them to determine which class they should be enrolled.

Mr Gangana said the GEOP was the third of such projects being implemented by the organisation that was aimed at sending back out-of-school children to school, adding that between 2013 to 2018, in a project supported by DFID and USAID, they were able to enrol in formal school 5,840 out-of-school children in four districts namely, Lawra, Nandom, Lambussie and North Gonja.

In the second project dubbed, REACH, which was implemented between 2015 and 2020, he said, they were able to enrol 93,315 out-of-school children in 43 districts in five regions, namely Upper West, Northern, Volta, Eastern and Upper East regions.

Monitor

He said after enrolling the children back to school, they monitored them to be sure they had been in school for at least two academic years, adding that, through those projects, some of the children had grown to become volunteer teachers while others were doing well in other fields of work.

He encouraged parents that it was important they send their children to school, explaining that without education, so many things would be cut away from their children.

The Country Director of Plan International Ghana, Constant Tchona, said they were organising the training within their core values of seeking the well-being of children, their human rights and equality for girls.

He called on journalists to amplify the voices of children, girls and the communities, to bring to light what was happening and the revolution being led by the people themselves.

The Communications and Influencing Specialist of Plan International Ghana, Regina Asamoah, said the media formed an integral part of what they did and how they got their messages across everywhere they implemented their projects.