Friday 4 April 2014

THE GHANA COMPLEMENTARY BASIC EDUCATION PROGRAMME HOLDS A REFLECTION MEETING ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF CBE TLMs

By: Abdul-Mumin Ahmed


The Ghana Complementary Basic Education (GCBE) Programme is a nation-wide programme that provides complementary education to out-of-school children within the ages of 8 and 14 years in underserved and hard to reach communities in Ghana. With the support of the Department for International Development (DFID), the Government of Ghana partners with key Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and other education stakeholders to implement complementary education in targeted districts in Ghana. DFID is sponsoring the programme for the initial three years (2013 to 2016) with the aim that the Government of Ghana will take over sponsorship of the programme after 2016. Implementation of GCBE started in October 2013 in 32 districts in Northern, Upper East, Upper West and the Brong Ahafo Regions.

Having made significant progress in the implementation of the programme for six months, key implementing partners and stakeholders met to reflect and discuss the effectiveness of the CBE teaching and learning materials and the CBE trainings. The purpose of the reflection meeting was to; identify challenges faced by Facilitators in the use of the CBE TLMs and how these challenges could be addressed in the next cycle, review the effectiveness of the training of trainers’ workshops and to discuss how to improve the teaching and learning materials and training workshops under the complementary basic education programnme.

The two days reflection meeting, organized by the GCBE Management Unit had in attendance personnel form the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Ghana Education Service (GES) and the Implementing Partners; including School for Life, PRONET, Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (GLLBT) and Link Community Development (LCD). Dr Leslie Casely-Hayford of the CBE management unit lamented that Ghana currently commits 12 percent of its income to education yet only 2 percent of primary 1 to primary 3pupils are able to attain the required proficiency levels. This phenomenon, she said is unacceptable and must be addressed with concerted efforts by education stakeholders.

The meeting achieved its objectives. Major challenges that confront facilitators, especially with the use of the CBE Manuals and TLMs were discussed. More importantly, specific inconsistencies regarding the orthography of some of the languages used were identified
Discussions in respect of these challenges provided the requisite impetus for improvement of the manuals and TLMs so as to improve learning outcomes of pupils.

Preparations for the second phase of the programme have started with the Request for Proposals (RfP) by the Management Unit. It is envisioned that the outcome of the meeting will contribute significantly to improving implementation of the Programme in the next cycle.

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