Ministry signs contract with three NGOs to bring 70,000 children back to school
The Ministry of Education (MOE) through the Ghana Education Outcomes Project (GEOP), has signed a contract with three service providers to bring 70,000 out-of-school children back to school.
The service providers comprising Street Child UK, Plan International and School for Life Education Outcomes Project are being funded by the Education Ministry in collaboration with its development partners with a grant facility of $25.5 million from the Global Partnership for Results-Based Approaches (GPRBA) as additional funding for the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP).
The service providers will help bring improvement in the quality of education in low-performing basic schools in the country, build the human capital index of children by letting them acquire basic numeracy and literacy skills.
The contract also requires the service providers to help improve learning outcomes for the targeted population by re-integrating out-of-school children into mainstream beneficiary schools, strengthening the use of resources efficiently, introducing new capacity-building systems for teachers in beneficiary schools and improving retention in the beneficiary schools over a period of two years.
Mr Divine Ayidzoe, Acting Chief Director of the Ministry, signed on behalf of the Education Ministry while the leadership of the three Service Providers signed for their respective institutions.
The Ag.Chief Director indicated that the project which was an additional funding for the Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project had the theme, “Getting all children educated through support to schools and communities.”
He stressed that with good collaboration between the Ministry, the service providers and other stakeholders, many children especially those who are out of school would go back to school to benefit from education for their own good as well as shape their dreams to contribute towards the development of the nation.
Mr Ayidzoe pledged to create an enabling environment for the service providers and other stakeholders in the education space to contribute towards improving education in the country.
He urged the service providers to bring all their expertise to bear to help bring improvement into the education sector as well as improve enrollment in schools through various innovations.
Mr Zakaria Sulemana, Ghana Country Representative, Street Child UK, pledged to work hard with all stakeholders towards attaining the target of the project and called on all stakeholders to come together towards achieving the goals set by the project.
The GEOP aims at helping improve the quality of education in selected low-performing basic schools and strengthen education sector equity and accountability in Ghana.
The project has two broad components namely the Rural Component and the Urban Component with the Rural Component, targeting 60,000 out-of-school children (OOSC) in rural Ghana, specifically from selected districts in the Northern, North East, Savannah, Bono, and Oti Regions with a high prevalence of OOSC.
Source: GNA