UNDER-TREE SCHOOLS' HINDER EDUCATION (NOV 13)

MAJOR strides have been made in the provision of educational infrastructure throughout the country since our attainment of nationhood.
Successive governments since independence have allocated the lion’s share of the national budget to finance the educational sector. This is in recognition of the fact that human resource empowerment is the backbone of national development.
The country’s forward march lies in the availability of a large corps of skilled manpower ready to lead the assault on the challenges that hold back our development.
Unfortunately, hard as we try as a nation to modernise educational curricula, update infrastructure and improve conditions of service of educational workers, we are still far away from the goals captured in the reports of the various educational reform committees.
The DAILY GRAPHIC considers the introduction of the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) as a bold attempt to break the hurdles that hindered education financing in the past.
The GETFund is helping to renew infrastructure and other educational facilities in both basic and second-cycle institutions. One positive manifestation of the fund is the request from proprietors of private educational institutions to be allowed to access the fund to improve facilities in their institutions.
The DAILY GRAPHIC finds it refreshing that pragmatic steps are being taken now to stop the practice of pupils in certain parts of the country attending classes under trees.
They are known as “under-tree schools” and at the last count in 2004 about 2,000 schools were found to have existed under trees, a situation which caught the attention of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports and the GETFund for redress.
The Administrator of the GETFund, Mr Fosuaba Mensah Banahene, told the DAILY GRAPHIC that since last year the GETFund had provided funding for the construction of 1,000 school blocks to provide classroom accommodation for schools which held classes under trees.
Many Ghanaians have always been stunned by the spectacle of children studying under trees or in classrooms without chairs.
We commend the GETFund for its support for these schools to reduce the stress on teachers who teach under such conditions and make the school environment attractive to all children of school age.
The DAILY GRAPHIC calls on the government to take immediate steps to provide modern classroom blocks for the rest of the schools under trees.
Ghana is touted as one of the few countries on the road to meeting some of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and since access to primary education is one of the measurable goals, it is only proper for the government to end the spectacle of “under-tree schools”.
It can only be a relic of backwardness which must change immediately if we must attain universal access to education. We are not only interested in access to education nation-wide but also qualitative education that can churn out the skilled manpower to champion our development agenda.