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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