OTHERWISE KNOWN as the Global Goals, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which came into effect in January 2016 are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity.
Being spearheaded by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), all the 17 goals are aimed at building on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals with the inclusion of areas such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace and justice, among other priorities.
The SDG 4 is on ‘Quality Education’. It highlights the need for countries including Ghana that have signed on to the goals to ensure they build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all by 2030.
However, Ghana‘s effort to achieve this could be a mirage if deliberate and accelerated measures are not put in place to provide child friendly environment for teaching and learning in all basic schools.
One of Ghana’s poorest regions, the Upper East Region, is suffering from a huge infrastructural deficit in many of its public basic schools. Statistics from the regional office of the Ghana Education Service have revealed 365 schools are either completely under trees or in dilapidated structures.
Again, pupils of many of the public schools still squat or lie on their bellies on rough bare floors in their supposed classrooms to learn. Some of the floors have never been floored while many of the floored ones have their screeding torn apart and thus exposing the children to rough and dusty floors. Not even what is referred to as ‘town schools’ are spared of this menace as investigations by this reporter revealed a number of public basic schools in the Bolgatanga Municipality are still running classes either under school trees and or in dilapidated blocks.
Kolbia Primary School
This school is in the Bolgatanga West ‘B’ Circuit. Pupils here sit under two dilapidated sheds that can be best described as death trap. Deep cracks in almost all the corners of the blocks and rough floors are threats to the lives of the innocent children and their teachers who say they have no option than to hold classes under these sheds.
Miss Beatrice Tekyewaa is a class one teacher of Kolbia Primary School. She laments: “With the nature of their sitting arrangements, you know there are no desks so in terms of writing; some push others because they don’t have the space to write. The environment too, once someone is passing, their concentration goes there. Animals come to pass, they even tie some around so you see, the place is not already blocked.”
According to her, it is extremely difficult to teach the children good handwriting skills because there are no desks for the children to put their books on. They have only two options of placing their books – on the rough floors or on their laps. Either way is unacceptable.
The possibility of these children developing spinal problems due to their sitting postures is high.
Another teacher who gave his name only as Joshua teaches class two ‘B’. He has sixty pupils in his classroom. He says: “The situation is really terrible because of the open nature of the classroom, when you are teaching, they don’t pay attention and you can’t always get them to pay attention because they see everything virtually around them and so their attention always drives them away from the classroom to the environment. And the worse thing is that because they have no chairs, they really have a problem writing so we are trying to get them to use ‘my second copy books’ to help them but even that, not all of them can afford it. As you can see, they are just on the floor. After the lessons when you give exercise, you need to allow them spacing up and lie on the ground so they can write.”
It was striking when Mr. John Brown, Circuit Supervisor of the Bolgatanga West ‘B’ Circuit revealed that the situation at Tampure ‘B’ Primary School, one of the 19 schools in that circuit is more disheartening than what Kolbia Primary school is experiencing. According to him, all the pupils in that school sit on the floor. “Where they [pupils] sit is ground not even a floor,” he stressed.
St. Charles Primary School
A visit to this school, also in the Bolgatanga Municipality revealed though the school has good classroom blocks, the desks on which the pupils sit are not adequate for all classrooms. In one of the lower primary classes, some pupils sit and stretch the legs on the bare floor to learn.
Bongo District
At Atanda Primary School and KG, children learn under various harsh conditions. The school cannot boast of a single classroom, except an uncompleted mud structure of a local Church with sandy floor and a big tree with an open dry space, where the pupils undertake their lessons.
The school was started in 2015 by Julius Ayamga Pascal who says, he returned home from Southern Ghana and was moved by the plight of the orphans in the community, who had no one to take them to school in Goo and so was left to loiter.
Though he says the Ghana Education Service in the Bongo District has given the school 25 dual desks and further promised to take over the school, there is an urgent need for help pupils in KG 2 and primary 1, 2 and 3 learn in an uncompleted local Church’s structure.
Bawku West District
In 2016 and May 2017, 13 school blocks were ripped off leaving hundreds of school children displaced. Unfortunately, only five of these school blocks have been re-roofed. Occupants of the remaining blocks are either still sitting under trees or managing in the same blocks yet to be re-roofed.
In the case of Kolbia Primary school, the headmistress, Madam Rose Banbilla, was transferred to the school in 2013/2014 academic year to meet the school in that bad state. She tells this reporter, all along, she has been soliciting for support to fix the problem but to no avail.
Not the Parent-Teacher Association, School Management Committees, community opinion leaders and above all, administrators of the Ghana Education Service are all aware of the plight of the school but nothing has been done to fix the problem.
She says the situation is greatly hindering teaching and learning. As she retires this year, her wish is to have the open sheds of the school closed and dual desks provided but, the question is; who is listening to her and coming to the aid of the school?
Though the 2016 Education Sector Performance Report suggested general improvement in all areas of educational needs including access, enrollment and retention, this is not reflective in enough as our investigations reveal a dire situation.
Observations
The intimidations that heads of public institutions like the Ghana Education Service are put through whenever they give out information especially to the media about their institutions to draw the attention of the general public, the government and non-profit organizations who may assist in its self is a huge hindrance to smooth running of same institutions.
When I was doing this story, I made efforts to get information from the regional Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Education Service, Mr. John Bobby but he always have a weird way of responding to my questions and never gave any useful information. I wonder why he occupies that position if he cannot or may be, not allowed to speak on simple matters like how many public schools are under trees in the region.
The administrators at the Municipal education are worse of if it comes to speaking to the media on critical issues that are of public interest. They will simply tell one to go to the regional office and when one goes to the regional office, one is redirected to go to the municipal office.
I observed that in some schools, there were no teachers’ tables and chairs. This makes it unattractive for teachers to give class assignments because they will not be able to mark them since they have no chair to sit on or table to place the books on.
Suggestions/commendations
If Ghana as a country can really achieve SDG 4 by 2030, then it is not the pace at which the country is addressing infrastructural issues in public schools, especially at the basic level. This can only be achieved through a multidimensional, comprehensive and accelerated approach to ensure adequate provision of new school blocks, renovation of dilapidated school blocks, provision of adequate furniture and teaching and learning materials.
In order to ensure this is done, district directors of education should submit the needs of public schools in their jurisdiction the regional offices for onward submission to the education ministry to map up a comprehensive strategy to address the problem.
With funding support from the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) and UNDP-Ghana, this I will keenly monitor steps to be taken by the Ghana Education Service, the Ministry of Education and the government at large in finding remedies to these issues.
The author of this feature is the Founder/Managing Editor of TopNews Ghana. He is also the Upper East Regional Correspondent of The Chronicle newspaper.
Name: William Nlanjerbor JALULAH
E-mail address: williamjalulah14@gmail.com
Mobile No: 0246619090/0207687424
