$75.5m to improve basic education
The Global Partnership for Education, an international funding agency, has allocated 75.5 million dollars to Ghana to help improve the quality of basic education.
The amount, representing one of the largest donor supports for the educational sector, will be targeted at deprived districts which recorded abysmal performance in the last Basic Education Certificate Examination.
In the light of the poor BECE results in 2011 which sent shock waves across the nation, the Ministry of Education responded with the drawing up of elaborate intervention measures to salvage the situation.
The Ministry of Education has been able to convince the World Bank, at a meeting in Washington recently, to reverse its decision to disengage from basic education in Ghana. Consequently, the World Bank agreed to particularly play the role of a supervising entity to enable Ghana to apply to the GPE for funds to implement programmes that would enhance access to and quality of basic education.
The Ministry of Education intends to disburse the GPE funds in two forms — the Deprived Districts Grant and the Schools Grant Scheme. The Deprived Districts Grant is purposed to increase access to education and improve learning outcomes, while the School Grant Scheme is aimed at allowing beneficiary schools to apply the funds to critical areas they believe can enhance quality learning.
Currently, the Ministry of Education has identified 61 districts as deprived in terms of academic performance, but the number is likely to increase after the application of new and broader criteria for the determination of such deprived districts.
Another component of the fund will be to finance the upgrading of at least 8,000 trained teachers, 75 per cent of whom will be allocated to the deprived districts.
Furthermore, the fund will be used to enhance supervision of education services in order to improve school monitoring, accountability and transparency to ultimately improve learning outcomes.
