Strengthen basic education to prepare children adequately

The Chairman of the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), Prof. Stephen Adei, has called for the strengthening of basic education to adequately prepare children for further studies.

He said quality education at the basic level was vital to the success of children’s educational career.

Speaking at the first anniversary lecture of the Northern Accra Diocese of the Methodist Church Ghana at New Achimota last Thursday, Prof. Adei said for the free senior high school (SHS) policy to be successful, there must be improvement in basic education.

The lecture was on the theme: “Ghana’s development history and current agenda: Are we progressing?”

What to do

Prof. Adei noted that teachers played a key role in quality basic education and stressed the need for them to be paid well and provided with incentives to motivate them to carry out their work.

While teachers were motivated to work hard, the NDPC Chairman said, society must insist that they pay greater attention to their work and refrain from strikes.

He further called for the improvement of supervision in basic schools, saying the effects of proper teacher supervision on pupils were enormous.

He intimated that if trained teachers could not produce literates at the basic school level, that might be a management issue.

Sustainable country

Touching on sustainable national development, Prof. Adei said the four things that Ghana needed to achieve that goal were improvement in the material welfare of the people, social cohesion, cultural development and a change in attitudes and behaviours.

He said Ghana was endowed with natural resources that must be harnessed for the benefit of the people, noting that Ghana needed to invest in heavy industries, such as petrochemical, which required the use of petroleum products and salt, which it had in abundance.

“To become the properly developed country that we are yearning for, we need integrated aluminium, iron and steel industries to make use of the huge bauxite and iron ore deposits that we have,” he said.

Good policies

Tracing Ghana’s history, Prof. Adei said it had seen some improvement in terms of development, but added that there was more to be done.

He said the current government had good policies that would propel the country forward and cited the Planting for Food and Jobs programme as one of such laudable policies.

He, however, called for the acceleration of the development processes.

Infrastructure development

The NDPC Chairman also pushed for Ghana to improve on its infrastructure projects such as railways, which he believed would drive the national development agenda to greater levels.

He also called for the improvement in the road network in the country.

Prayer

In the nation’s quest to attain accelerated development, he said, prayer must also be taken seriously and called on Christians to continue to pray for the country.

Deforestation

The Chairman for the event, Prof. William Baah Boateng, said deforestation “was killing the country”.

Therefore, he said, there was the need to protect the forest reserves to sustain the environment.

He advised the people to ensure proper disposal of their solid and liquid waste to make for proper sanitation across the country.