Project Manager with STAR-Ghana Foundation, Dr. Ernestina Tetteh, is lamenting over government’s delay in replacing all schools under trees.
She observed that such schools are yet to see improvement two years after the promise.
In an interview on Eyewitness News on Citi FM, Dr. Ernestina Tetteh said, “In 2021, the Ministry of Education launched a programme to replace all schools under trees, sheds and dilapidated structures with decent new school buildings by 2025. What we are saying is that it’s going at a rather slow pace. After two years of the promise, only 17 have been completed. This is too slow. If we are going at this pace, it will take more years for this to be resolved. This is not acceptable”.
The Project Manager with STAR-Ghana Foundation appealed to the government to expedite action to replace schools under trees with decent buildings.
“We are urging government to increase the pace because it was out of goodwill that government decided to do this because the situation is dire,” she appealed.
STAR-Ghana Foundation, and other Civil Society Organisations including ActionAid, Africa Education Watch, Ghana CSOs Platform on SDGs, CAMFED, GNAT, GNECC, CCT, World Vision and ICDP, have cast a damning verdict of Ghana’s basic education system.
The groups in a document titled “Memorandum of Issues in the Basic Education Sector” complained about a myriad of problems including over-overcrowding in some schools.
The groups complained about lack of textbooks and exercise books for school children, non-payment of utility bills, lack of incentives for teachers in rural areas, politicisation of recruitment of teachers, among others.