Plan Ghana encourages more children to go to school
In support of efforts to encourage children to enrol in schools in the Upper West Region, Plan Ghana a non-governmental organisation (NGO), has embarked on a three-year campaign to bring most children between the ages of eight and 14 to the classroom.
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Since last academic year, the organisation has been making efforts to enrol more children in schools in three selected districts. The districts are: Nandom, Lawra and Lambussie/Karni and they are sponsored by the Department for International Development (DFID).
Complementary-based Education
The NGO has embarked on the campaign to bring these children to the classroom under its project dubbed “Complementary-based Education" (CBE). It is doing this by holding classes for the children in their local languages for nine months. They are taught numeracy and literacy in either the Sissali or Dagaare language.
Under the programme, 25 children are put in a classroom where they are taught between 2pm and 5pm daily after they have used the morning session performing their chores at home or on the farm.
The classes are run in classrooms after the normal school hours.
First and second phases
The first phase of the CBE programme started from October 2013 to June 2014. After that, the children were introduced to formal education and based on their respective performances, each of them was placed in a relevant class. In the first phase, out of 1,500 children who were enrolled in the three districts, 1,246 completed the course and were integrated into the formal system of education in their locality. They were made up of 685 boys and 561 girls.
For the second phase which began in October 2014 and would be ending in June 2015, Plan Ghana has so far enrolled 2,025 children with 81 facilitators. These facilitators, who are performing the duties on voluntary basis, are trained in basic teaching skills and methodologies.
When officials of Plan Ghana, the Ghana Education Service and some selected media personnel engaged in an evaluation exercise to ascertain the impact of the programme in the districts, it was revealed that the project was yielding good results, since children studying under this method were literate in their local languages. Teaching them initially in their own languages also enabled them to grasp the fundamentals of their education.
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Main challenges
According to Mr Simon Gaamaal, Cultural Co-ordinator of the Lambussie/Karni District, the main challenges hindering the efforts of parents to send their children to school were socio-economic. He explained that their parents engaged most of the children in activities like herding cattle, helping on the farm, selling various items and foodstuffs.
"They do this to help supplement the incomes of their parents. Hence, their parents find it convenient to keep them out of the classrooms," he said, adding that now with this project gaining root, the parents would not benefit from their children who undertook income-generating activities to support them.
Madam Dery Temgyelme, a committee member of the project at Zendaagangn, said to ensure that the children were kept in formal education after their initial training, some basic necessities should be provided for them in the form of books, pens and pencils, school uniforms and furniture, among others.
Mr Mathias Gangana, the Project Co-ordinator, commended Plan Ghana and DFID for the programme and noted that the system being rolled out would help lay a solid foundation for the children and make it easier for them to join the formal system.
He said he was happy to note that some of the children could read in their local languages better than those they joined in the formal system.
Sustainability
The stakeholders expressed the need to sustain the programme after 2016. Other lessons learnt from the programme showed that children who would otherwise not have been in school have been enrolled into the formal educational system.