The Deputy Upper East Regional Minister, Mrs Lucy Awuni, has expressed her disappointment at the abysmal series of performances in the Basic Education Certificate Examination [BECE] by Junior High Schools in the Upper East region for the past years. She said the trend has become so disturbing that there is the need for effective investigation into possible reasons for the declining standards in education in the region.

While citing perpetual lateness, habitual absenteeism and irresponsible use of instructional hours on the part of some teachers as a contributory factor to falling standards in education, the Deputy Minister appealed to the media to devote more time and attention to uncover elements that are responsible for the deplorable performance of children in both internal and external exams.

Mrs Lucy Awuni who was briefing the media at her office in Bolgatanga on her observations in the education sector, disclosed that of the nine districts in the region, only the Bongo district scored close to average in this year’s BECE scorings with 49.6 per cent.

The Talensi-Nabdam, Bolgatanga and Bawku districts have some marginal improvements in their performances.

The rest recorded drastic drops this year compared to their performance in 2010. For instance, Kassena-Nankana West dropped from 52 per cent in 2010 to 38.9 per cent in 2011 by way of performance with the Garu-Tempane district heading down from 27 per cent last year to 16.1 per cent in 2011.

The Deputy Minister who is also a retired educationist entreated all teachers to live up to their responsibilities by adopting suitable teaching methodologies that will make learning more comprehensive and effective.

She also urged them to use various logistics and educational interventions instituted by government
stressing that “a society that does not cater for its children has no future”.

According to her, the Ghana School Feeding Programme, distribution of free school uniform and eradication of schools under-trees all show that government is poised to improving educational standards.

She challenged parents to do more than just enrolling their children in school by closely monitoring their attendance in school and performance.

The newly appointed Upper East Regional Director of Education, Mr Paul Apanga noted that government has made frantic moves to enhance ICT learning in schools. He revealed that when basic schools re-opened, 150 laptops were received by the education directorate for distribution to 10 selected schools in the region.

Mr Apanga said a recent government directive also asked his office to select 90 schools in the region to be supplied with computers and therefore appealed to the district assemblies to provide separate workshops as well as electricity and security for beneficiary schools.

Source: ISD (Peter Atogewe Wedam, Bolgatanga)

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