The District Chief Executive [DCE] for Bongo in the Upper East Region, Hon. Peter Ayamga Ayinbisa has formally welcomed several tens of first-time pupils into the formal school system at some selected schools across the district.
The DCE led a team including the Bongo District Director of the Ghana Education Service [GES], Mr. Duncan Nsoh and the Paramount Chief of the Bongo Traditional Area, Bo-Naba Baba Salifu A. Alemyaarum to interact with young children who were mostly reporting for the very first time in their lives, either into Kindergarten [KG] class one or Primary School class one under the annual “My First Day At School” event.
The team’s first point of call was the Bogrigo DA Primary School under the Central-East Circuit where 21 boys and 20 girls were registered into the school’s Kindergarten while 18 boys and 23 girls were enrolled into Primary one. Biscuits and assorted soft drinks were distributed among the children while exercise books and four boxes of chalk were presented to the school authorities.
At the Soe RC Primary “A” school which was the second stop of the team, 11 boys and eight girls reported into the KG while 30 children, comprising 16 boys and 14 girls were taken into Primary one. Here, Hon. Ayinbisa interacted with the children and encouraged them to take their lessons seriously in order to become useful persons in the future to themselves, their families and society in general. He turned to the teachers and charged them to live up to their responsibilities by assisting to mould the kids under their care and also devote proper attention to children with special needs and learning difficulties.
He also appealed to the teachers to desist from requesting frequent transfers out of the area explaining that “the more you stay at a school, the more you get used to the students and understand them better so as to be effective in imparting knowledge to them”. He hinted that government on its part was poised to motivate teachers adequately and also organise training courses for them to improve their knowledge on the job.
The DCE was impressed with the enthusiasm and joy on the faces of the young children who thronged the schools to be part of the formal education system. He noted that if the foundation is properly laid for these children, the district’s performance in the BECE exams will certainly improve in the coming years. He disclosed that District Education Oversight Committee [DEOC] which he chairs, had a meeting recently and among other things, discussed the causes for the poor performance by the district’s schools at the BECE examinations. He attributed this partly to the GES’ policy of mass promotions from primary six into the Junior High School and promised that the Assembly will assist DEOC with adequate logistics to function efficiently to help remedy the situation.
Meanwhile, the Bo-Naba admonished teachers against tainting their work with politics since that could negatively affect their output and in the long run, produce bad academic results on the part of students. Bo-Naba also used the occasion to praise President Nana Addo and his government for the implementation of the free Senior High School education programme. He noted that, it had brought relief to himself and thousands of poor parents, some of whom often call on him to assist in paying their wards’ fees and other school expenses. He however advised headmasters to refrain from collecting monies from the fresh students under the programme since such acts were illegal and also send out wrong signals about the free education roll out.
The Sambologo DA Primary School in the North Circuit of the district was also visited where the KG recorded only 14 children made up of eight boys and six girls while the Primary enrolment had 14 boys and 24 girls. On the head-teacher’s appeal, the DCE and the education director agreed to supply the school with 25 dual desks which translates to 50 classroom sitting spaces for about 50 pupils of the school. Meanwhile at the Label Memorial Primary School the last the team visited, Primary one had 19 boys and 17 girls while the KG registered 19 boys and 24 girls.
The GES Director, Mr. Duncan Nsoh revealed that the district expects to enroll about 6,085 fresh pupils into some 75 KGs and 74 Primary schools across the district. Pupils in all the other schools visited also received assorted drinks and biscuits while their respective schools each took delivery of four boxes of chalk and some quantities of exercise books.
Source: Peter Atogewe Wedam (ISD)
