Prez inaugurates community SHS for Derma
The government's aggressive investment in educational infrastructure will accelerate the move towards increased access to quality education, President John Dramani Mahama has said.
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He stated that without increased infrastructure development, many young people of school age would be out of school.
President Mahama said this when he inaugurated the sixth of his flagship educational project — the community day senior high schools (SHSs) at Derma in the Tano South District in the Brong Ahafo Region yesterday.
The inauguration ceremony was marked with pomp and ceremony by the chiefs and people of Derma.
Enrolment
The existing community day SHS in the town, with enrolment of 243, which operated from a ramshackle six-classroom structure, will relocate to the three-storey E-shaped building designed to accommodate 1,500 students.
President Mahama asked the Ghana Education Service (GES) not to wait for the inauguration of the community day SHSs before enrolment.
"I have asked the GES to engage in continuous population of the schools as they are completed," he said
The Brong Ahafo Region has 111 SHSs, 64 of them public, while 47 are private.
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The President said the schools enrolled about 80,000 students, although there were about 160,000 students of school age in the region.
“That is why the opening of new schools like the Derma Community SHS is important,” he said.
He said a number of the community day SHSs had been completed and were ready for inauguration.
President Mahama said the progressively free education policy was being pursued with all seriousness.
He said the policy, which started with day students in deprived schools, would be extended to boarding students in deprived schools in the next academic year.
He said a budget allocation of GH¢60 million had been made for the take-off in the first term of the 2016/2017 academic year.
Text books
The President said the free textbook policy would be expanded from one textbook per child to four textbooks per child.
He said the government would also supply 3,558,820 textbooks on Core Mathematics, Social Science and Core Science to SHSs.
The Chief of Derma, Nana Owusu Asante II, said he allocated 43 acres for the construction of the school.
He commended the government for the numerous development projects it had provided for the area.
The Minister of Education, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, urged parents to take interest in the education of their children.