By
Gideon D. Ebbah, GNA
Effiduase (Ash),
Nov. 14, GNA – The Sekyere East District Directorate of the Ghana Education
Service (GES) has held its turn of “the Right Age Enrollment (RAE)” campaign.
This is a national
public sensitization exercise rolled out by the GES to help enroll in school,
all children of school going age.
The RAE is in line
with an all-inclusive national educational drive being rolled out to ensure
that no child is left behind in the nation’s effort to mobilize human resources
for accelerated development.
Speaking at a town
hall meeting at Effiduase, Madam Vida Barbara Ntow, the Early Childhood
Coordinator at the GES Headquarters, said the meeting is aimed at engaging all parents
and stakeholders to impress upon them the need to enroll their children who
have turned age four at the pre-school level.
She told the meeting
attended by parents and other stakeholders that the RAE aims at ensuring that
all children in that age bracket are enrolled at Kindergarten (KG) level, where
a systematic educational approach, geared at sustaining the children’s interest
in school, is applied.
Additionally, the
RAE would also help in the early detection of children with learning
difficulties to enable such children receive the appropriate professional
intervention and support to ensure that they go through formal education
without any hindrance.
Again, she said,
early enrollment amongst KG children has enabled the children to gain the
requisite cognitive, social, physical and learning skills necessary to migrate
to Primary One and further.
She said the main
challenge facing Ghana’s Kindergarten education is not exclusion or dropout,
but the problem had to do with the mixture of both over or under-aged children
sitting in pre-school classrooms.
The other challenge,
she said, was children of school going age who are not in school, .
“Since the Free
Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) of the government was enabling
free and universal access to basic education, there is no excuse for parents
especially those in the rural and poverty-prone areas of the urban centers to
enroll their children at the right age of 4”.
Madam Mary Boatemaa
Marfo, the District Chief Executive (DCE) said it is necessary for all parents
to consider and partake in the RAE campaign since education empowers
individuals from their childhood to matured stage.
Mr David Oppong, the
Sekyere East GES District Director, called for strong coordination between the
GES district directorates and the department of Social Welfare in terms of
enhancing and sustaining monitoring and evaluations on the National Policy of
compulsory enrolment of children at age four in the KG1.
The Reverend Father
Peter Brenyah, the Priest of the Effiduase Catholic Church and the Local
Manager of the Catholic schools, urged the GES to collaborate with the District
Assembly in engaging the relevant stakeholders in finding sustainable solutions
to challenges in the primary education sector.
GNA
