SCHOOL FOR LIFE COLLABORATES WITH IBIS, RCC AND GES TO HOLD A NORTHERN REGIONAL EDUCATION FORUM

By: Abdul-Mumin Ahmed, Communications and Advocacy Officer, SfL

School for Life (SfL) is a non-governmental organization in Northern Ghana that works to strengthen civil society’s role in improving access to relevant quality education by functioning as lead organization in delivering, demonstrating and advocating for mother-tongue based complementary basic education in underserved areas of Ghana. 

In line with SfL’s mission of working to improve quality basic education in Ghana, the organization is partnering with IBIS Ghana, the Northern Regional Coordinating Council and the Northern Regional Directorate of Education to organize a two day forum on education. The forum which is slated for April 28th and 29th 2014 is aimed at providing education stakeholders in the region the platform to deliberate on the current developmental challenges confronting the education sector in Northern Region, and come out with workable solutions to surmount the identified challenges. The forum will also afford the public the opportunity to discuss the utilization of donor funds and the Ghana Partnership for Education Grant in particular. This is ultimately meant to assess the impact of the donor funds on performance at the basic education level in Northern Region and to come out with more effective ways of utilizing the funds to better education delivery and performance at the basic level.

To this effect, districts are selected to make presentations on the progress of basic education in their respective districts in the past three years. Importantly, sub-themes bothering on Teachers supply and distribution, Pupil-Teacher contact hours, Girl child education and Education finance sources and utilization will be identified and groups formed around them for discussions. Key solutions and strategies identified will pave way for district-specific action plans which will be monitored by the Regional Coordinating Council.

Stand by for more details from the Forum…

GES DIRECTOR SHEDS TEARS OF JOY DURING A UNICEF REVIEW MEETING

By: Issahaku Ibrahim, CBE Coordinator, Savelugu District

The Director of Education for Komenda, Edina, Abirem and Aguafo (KEEA) District, Mr. Gabriel K. Gademor shed tears during a UNICEF review meeting in Tamale.  The two days review meeting was held at the Arewa Sunshine hotel in Tamale on Tuesday February 25 and Wednesday February 26, 2014. 

The meeting was the first of its kind to be organized by UNICEF under the UNICEF-sponsored CBE programme and brought together officials of UNICEF, School for Life Management, Directors of Education, National Service Coordinators and District Coordinators of the CBE program. The purpose of the event was to bring together key actors of the UNICEF-sponsored Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme in the country to review implementation of the Program and the way forward.

As part of the 2 days programme, the group undertook a field visit to a CBE class at Jenjorikukuo, a community 6   Kilometers south-east of Savelugu, the District Capital. In presenting his report of the field visit at a plenary session, Mr. Gabriel K. Gademor shed tears over what he described as great and incredible performance of children who after only 4 months of literacy lessons were able to recognize 3 letter words, read and do simple arithmetics. He was particularly overwhelmed by the ability of the children to pronounce and write unknown words and names including his name which was not familiar in the children’s setting.  

The Director fumed with anger comparing the output of regular classroom teachers in his district to the CBE Facilitators, who are not trained teachers and are not paid salaries.  He lamented that unlike Facilitators, some teachers in the formal schools with all the monthly salaries and logistics could not teach children up to class 6 to read and pronounce 4 letter words.

The CBE model, He concluded is a huge success even though the nine month cycle is yet to be completed. This and many others go a long way to confirm how effective the Ghana Complementary Basic Education Programme is in making children literate after only nine months of instruction.

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.

School for Life Advertises Learning and Development Center (LDC) in Upper East Region

By: Abdul-Mumin Ahmed

School for Life Ghana, has for the past two decades been providing complementary basic education to out-of-school children in deprived and under-served areas of Ghana. This commitment is in line with SfL’s mission of working to strengthen civil society’s role of improving access to relevant quality basic education by functioning as lead organization in delivering, demonstrating and advocating for mother-tongue based complementary basic education in underserved areas of Ghana. School for Life strives to be a center of excellence that inspire breakthroughs in education and provide technical support to civil society and education stakeholders.

School for Life has a superior track record of providing excellent complementary basic education in mother-tongue for out-of-school children. This has endowed the organization with enormous experiences, expertise and knowledge of challenges of basic education in Ghana and has therefore positioned the organization in a better place to present alternative ways of surmounting the challenges of basic education and to support the nation’s efforts at achieving universal basic education by 2015.

The learning and Development Center (LDC) was therefore established in 2012 to serve as a resource center that provides technical support to education stakeholders. The LDC has since been operational and has provided technical support to: IPA in the TCAI project, TZEDEK in piloting the EQUIP project, ACDEP and a number of private basic schools in Tamale.

As one of the ways of extending the services of the LDC to other parts of Ghana, a workshop was organized in the Upper East Region to advertise the LDC, the services available, who can access services and how to access the services. The workshop was very successful. Participants who were drawn from the Ghana Education Service, the mission education units, NGOs, CBOs, CSOs and private institutions were happy to learn of a center like the LDC that can support them in their efforts to providing quality education. A number of the private institutions pledged to contact the LDC to access services especially in the area of training teaching staff to improve quality of teaching and learning.

The LDC exist to provide services and technical support to education institutions, NGOs, CBOs, CSOs and all education stakeholders to better quality of education in Ghana. You can contact the LDC at sfl@vodafone.com.gh or visit the School for Life website (www.schoolforlifegh.org) for more information. Join us, lets partner to make education a more viable and prosperous venture for the future generations.

EQUIP ORGANIZES REFRESHER TRAINING WORKSHOP FOR TEACHERS

By: Abdul-Mumin Ahmed, Communications and Advocacy Officer, School for Life

       Participants demonstrating how to use an A4 paper to design a box

The education Quality Initiative Project (EQUIP) is co-funded by Comic Relief and Tzedek. In collaboration with Tzedek, School for Life currently implements the project in four deprived districts (Saboba, Cgereponi, Savelugu/Nanton and Kumbungu) in the Northern Region of Ghana. The main aim of the project is to contribute significantly to improving quality basic education in Ghana through collaboration with key stakeholders in the Ghana Education Service. Importantly, the project aims at equipping teachers in very deprived schools with the requisite knowledge and skills to enable them support pupils to achieve the required learning outcomes.

To achieve the set goals and objectives, School for Life organized an initial training workshop in 2013 for Head Teachers of beneficiary schools and selected Circuit Supervisors of the implementing districts.

Following the initial training, evidence from monitoring visits to EQUIP beneficiary schools revealed that the initiative  is indeed significantly improving quality of teaching and learning in schools. To consolidate the knowledge gained by teachers in the initial training, there was the need for a refresher training. Thus, a three day refresher training session was organized for Head Teachers of beneficiary Schools and selected Circuit Supervisors of the four implementing districts. The refresher workshop which took place between 9th and 11th of March, 2014 was purposely conducted to reorient and train participants on very pertinent issues that guide and support the implementation of the Project. The workshop, provided the opportunity for participants to share their experiences regarding the implementation of the project. Other crucial issues such as supervision in EQUIP, roles and responsibilities of SMCs, PTAs, teachers as well as Head Teachers of EQUIP beneficiary schools and gender issues in school management were discussed elaborately. 

The workshop deepened the knowledge and skills of Teachers and Circuit Supervisors on especially the use of Activity Based Learning Approaches and introduction to EQUIP sample teaching and learning materials.

School for Life undertakes Leadership and Advocacy Training for Female Local Committee Members

By Abdul-Mumin

As part of School for Life’s mission of working to improve and sustain access to and quality of basic education in Ghana through functional literacy and advocacy as a means to address poverty, underdevelopment and gender inequality; advocacy and leadership training is being organized for Local female committee members across three districts (Tolon, East Gonja and Nanumba-north districts) . The Local Committees were set up by School for Life in the operational communities to oversee the school for life program in their respective communities. Each committee has five people with a minimum of three females. 

The purpose of the leadership and advocacy training is to imbue in the female committee members the requisite skills and capacities needed to take up leadership roles in their communities and districts. Importantly, the training was also meant to encourage females to rise up to the challenge and advocate strongly towards addressing the needs of the communities. It is only when the majority of people in our communities and districts consciously advocate and influence policy initiatives that their real needs and problems can be addressed. Because of this, and in view of the overriding fact that females constitute more than fifty percent of people in our communities, the training was designed purposely for the female committee members.

Being a part of the training session in the Kali zone in the Tolon district, the women were very informed on the topic and shared with each other the strategies to use in advocacy and the numerous benefits they could accrue from advocacy works. These benefits, one participant summarized as “promoting unity, facilitating development and ensuring peace and stability.” These amazing revelations further consolidated School for Life’s belief that when women are informed, empowered and given the chance to lead development process, they are indeed capable and will lead us to our dream land.

This experience and many others are the reasons why we encourage everyone to join us and join hands towards building the capacity of women in leadership and advocacy to promote national development. 

Abdul-Mumin joins the School for Life Team!

My name is Abdul-Mumin Ahmed, and I am the newly appointed Communications and Advocacy Officer for the School for Life Program. In my new position here at School for Life, I will be in charge of managing the School for Life web page and the School for Life page on Facebook, supporting SfL’s Pedagogical research officer to undertake advocacy based research, improving School for Life’s relationship with the media and development partners, assisting in the development of the School for Life’s newsletter, organizing and coordinating advocacy capacity building for School for Life field staff and Monitoring advocacy interventions at the local level.

As a new member of the School for Life family, I find this position an extremely challenging one, especially because it is a newly created position with a lot of expectations.  Being the first person to take it up, I am greatly challenged to put up my best in projecting the image and good works of School for Life. In view of the nature of the position, I will be working closely to support the Deputy Manager for Advocacy and Gender, Lawrencia Dakurah-Abakisi.

I was born in Walewale, the district capital of the west mamprusi district, in Northern Ghana; where I undertook my primary and junior secondary school education. I continued senior secondary school education in business senior high school in Tamale and proceeded to Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology(KNUST) where I  studied BSc Development Planning. While studying at KNUST, I was a member of the KNUST students’ parliament, Ghana Association of Student Planners-KNUST and a prominent member of the Student’s Welfare Project. My participation in a number of advocacy works at Students’ Welfare Project lead me to nursing a dream of working in advocacy interventions. This dream,  is what triggered me to taking up the role here at School for Life.

My coming here, in my estimation, appropriately fulfils the purpose of the adage that holds that “we must always be fueled by our passion, beyond all other considerations”. My enduring passion for development works back in KNUST urged me to take up an internship with TCAI (Teacher Community Assistant Initiative), a project that was jointly implemented by School for Life and Innovations for Poverty Action across selected districts in Ghana. The project sought to determine the best method of remedial education or otherwise that could improve learning levels in basic schools. My involvement in the project continued after I completed school and ended in 2013 when the project implementation came to an end. I also engaged myself with Camfed-Ghana (an NGO that supports female education in a number of districts in Ghana) as an assistant in the Education Programme Office.

Having attained these fits of experience in development works, I finally decided to settle with School for Life as Communications and Advocacy Officer for two crucial reasons. Firstly, to continue the pursuance of development works that helps people build their potential through education. And importantly, to fulfill my long nurtured dream of working in advocacy interventions.