NEWS ARCHIVE 2010 - 14

TOLON:Education director worried over falling standards

Mr Amoli Abako, the Tolon District Director of Education, has expressed worry about the consistent falling standards in the performance of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the district and said it needed a holistic approach to reverse the trend.


Date Created : 4/16/2014 4:32:38 PM : Story Author : GhanaDistrict.Com

Mr Amoli Abako, the Tolon District Director of Education, has expressed worry about the consistent falling standards in the performance of the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) in the district and said it needed a holistic approach to reverse the trend.

He said almost all the necessary mechanisms to improve the situation had been put in place but it had been moving from bad to worse and appealed to all stakeholders in education to join hands to see how best good results could be achieved.

Mr Abako expressed the concern in Tolon during the joint presentation of awards to hard working teachers from the Tolon and Kumbungu districts aimed at ensuring that those who worked hard to salvage education in the area are honoured.

Each of the 70 hardworking teachers from the two districts took away a gas cooker, cylinder, electric stove and electric rice cooker and 10 persons from the non-teaching category also received similar awards.

Mr Abako said performance in the BECE continued to decline from 2010. In the 2010 BECE, out of 1,604 candidates presented 845 students passed representing 53 per cent, in 2011 BECE, out of 1,528 candidates presented only 556 students passed representing 37 per cent.

In 2012 of the 1,723 candidates presented only 591 students passed representing 34 per cent and out of 1,096 students presented in 2013 only 324 passed representing 30 per cent.

Mr Abako said the two districts came together to seek funding from the Ghana Partnership for Education Grant (GEPEG) to award the hardworking teachers because such motivation would help the teachers to put in their best.

He appealed to the award winners to step up efforts to improve education and advised truant teachers who intentionally commute from Tamale to their districts, the perpetual late comers and alcoholic teachers to stop before appropriate disciplinary measures were taken against them.

Mr Seidu Abukari, the District Chief Executive for Tolon, said the Assembly was ready to partner any group and organisation that would work towards improving the living conditions of the people including raising education standards.

He said falling standards in education had become a national issue and that a strong stakeholder consultation was needed to discuss the problem holistically and on a non-partisan basis.

He said there was also the need to inject a lot of innovative ways of addressing the problem in the Tolon and the Kumbungu districts and that he was going to liaise with the DCE for Kumbungu to ensure that all negative practices such as teacher absenteeism and drunkenness were nipped in the bud.

GNA