The Savannah Regional Minister, Hon. Saeed Muhazu Jibril, has instructed local assemblies in the region to assign at least 60% of funds available to them to help improve the education sector.
He gave the directive during a regional education forum organized by the Regional Coordinating Council on Wednesday, August 25, 2021.
The Minister’s directive is aimed to reduce the poor standards of education in the region as well as the infrastructure deficit.
During the forum, it was revealed that, less than 7% of students who sit for the West African Senior School Certificate Examination in the region are able to pass all subjects.
The Savannah Regional Director of Education, Mumuni Mbonwura Francis, indicated that the Bole Senior High School which is the best performing school managed a 6.34% pass rate in 2019.
According to the Regional Education Directorate, the region has a teacher deficit of 2,747 at all levels of basic education.
The Sawla-Tuna-Kalba District has the worse teacher deficit of 737, while the best is the West Gonja Municipality with a 151 teacher deficit.
Speaking at the forum, Mr. Saeed Muhazu Jibril noted that the necessary measures will be put in place to avert the situation in the region.
“The MMDAs in the Savannah Region, 60% of their funds are going to be spent on education. I’m not going to joke about it. So when you bring your medium-term plan and I take and study and I don’t see classrooms, I don’t see the renovation of classrooms, I don’t see furniture, I am going to throw it back at you to do it and bring it back before we approve.”
“I have instructed all District Chief Executives, those who are still there that this year’s DDF projects that they will be bringing, I want to see compound houses built for the various secondary (Senior High Schools) to take up their accommodation problems,” he stated.
Mr. Jibril also expressed his readiness to help solve teacher absenteeism in the region by instituting some drastic measures.
According to him, the situation where some teachers in the name of political communication do not attend school for weeks and months and in some cases, a whole semester will be a thing of the past.
The Central Gonja District Director of Education, Veronica Tampuor-Kuupol who spoke on behalf of his colleagues, enumerated lack of adequate logistics and absenteeism by teachers and students as major challenges facing education in the region.
“Another issue is logistics, lack of vehicles, motorbikes for our officers and fuel for monitoring. The few officers who have motorbikes have no fuel to go for monitoring.”
