One of the fundamentals for community development is education and it is the low literacy in rural communities that have led to the high poverty rate, high deprivation and unrealistic autocracy from a cross section of people in our jurisdiction. It is this fact that led to the sustainable development goal number 4 which entails quality education boiling down to our constitutional rights as a Ghanaian as the right to education. This is completely buttressed with the propoior policy of the Governments of Ghana since the time of Dr KWAME NKRUMAH who at his time education was free. Successive Governments built a national consensus on education where we have renowned policies like free compulsory basic education (FCUBE), progressively free SHS and free SHS.
What beat my mind off is the state of schools in villages all over Ghana especially the Tinyekuraa Primary school. Tinyekuraa is a village in Bole district, Savannah region of Ghana. It is a farming community which is characterized by high rate of child marriage and low literacy.
Happily, the school was started as an initiative of their Chief (Soldier) in 2011 as a school under tree where the facilitator was paid by the Chief. After the demise of the Chief in 2013, the community took over payments of the facilitator until in 2016 when Government constructed the community a three unit classroom block.
Since the well establishment of the school and for that matter Government takeover of the school, posting of teachers to the school has been a challenge since many teachers don’t want to go there and teach in the name that the place is a village.
The first batch of teachers there were three who taught for just a year and went away together. The next batch of teachers were two NABCO trainees who were posted there. Even though they served the best they can, the school couldn’t receive any facelift.
Suddenly, the two teachers there left the community after the second term vacation in 2019 and has not reported to work since then.
In the rain season, the Chief (Bakari James Amankwa) of the community and other community members had to move into the school when their houses collapsed rendering the school closed for the whole of the 2019/2020 third term and first term of the 2020/2021academic years.
As at now, apart from the Chief, all other community members who stayed in the school because of the disaster in their houses have moved to their houses. This has left the school to still close down since the reopening of school for the second term of the 2020/2021 academic year Second term. This implies that the school is now almost a year without being opened.
There are short and long term effects on the children of the Tinyekuraa community, Bole district and Ghana as a whole. Children in Tinyekuraa had to resort to travelling to Jentige by foot to attend school and those who cannot foot there have to stop going to school since then.
This is a leading factor that encourages early parenthood in the rural communities and low literacy in such localities.
Going forward, Bole district could be counted as a district with low literacy as GHANA will suffer the consequences of it.
The better way out of this pronounced promoted canker could be resolved if the GES in the district develop interest in rural community schools like the Tinyekuraa basic school by extending their monitoring works to those schools.
Besides that, Government should look at how teachers in such communities can be remunerated by giving teachers in rural communities accommodation allowances or providing them free accommodation. This will check irregularity and lateness to school due to teachers traveling to teach from Towns.
NGOs in education should look at how to adapt such community schools in the Northern sector to alleviate such happenings in rural communities.
It would serve Ghana right if we have start right education across the country where children get to start school the time they supposed to.
By: HON. E. A. KUNSAARI
CHACHE ELECTORAL AREA
0245138909