Bognaayili (N/R), Feb 02, GNA – A three-unit classroom block with office, washrooms and changing room for girls have been constructed for the Bognaayili D/A Junior High School (JHS) in the Kumbungu District of the Northern Region to improve access to education in the area.
The facility, estimated at GHC268,000.00 and equipped with furniture and textbooks, is also to help ensure improved education outcome in the area.
It was constructed by Markaz Al Bishara (MAB), a non-governmental organization, with funding support from the Christian Children’s Fund of Canada (CCFC), an international non-governmental organization.
The Bognaayili D/A Primary School is a MAB-assisted facility and its products would have to trek to the next community to access JHS education, a situation, which parents in the area considered unfair in terms of the welfare of their children.
They, therefore, prepared a make-shift structure where the children started JHS education, and later approached MAB to help construct a JHS block in the area to ensure that their children would not walk long distances to access such level of education.
Madam Patricia Gyan-Bassaw, Partner Programme Manager of MAB, during the handing over of the JHS block to the community and authorities of the school at Bognaayili, commended the community members for their commitment to ensure the successful completion of the project.
MAB has been working in parts of the Northern Region for about 30 years, focusing on early childhood development, quality education and supporting the Ghana Education Service (GES) to improve supervision at schools.
MAB’s partnership with CCFC started in 1997 and it has been spending 50 per cent of its budget on education to improve access and quality, and has so far constructed classroom blocks for 12 primary schools in the Gushegu and Sagnarigu Municipalities.
Aside education, MAB also works in the areas of water, sanitation and hygiene, strengthening country institutions, child protection and gender equality, and its interventions currently cover 13 communities in the Sagnarigu and Gushegu Municipalities.
Madam Gyan-Bassaw urged parents to keep their children in school and provide their educational needs to ensure that the investment made in terms of constructing the JHS block would be worthwhile.
Madam Theresa Baveng, Programme Manager of CCFC advised parents not to allow their daughters to go into head porterage because it was not good for their well-being, urging them to support the education of their children to enable them to attain their full potential.
Dr Hamza Adam, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Agribusiness and Applied Economics, University for Development Studies, who represented the Chief of Bognaayili during the handing over ceremony, assured that the community would protect the facility and ensure that their children remained in school.
Dr Adam appealed to the GES to send committed teachers to the school as well as intensify monitoring and supervision of teachers at the school to help improve education outcome in the area.
Mr Abdulai Salifu, Head Teacher at Bognaayili D/A JHS, thanked MAB for the project, saying it would help to ensure improved teaching and learning, assuring that the teachers would do more to improve standard of education in the area.
He said the first batch of pupils from the school, who sat the 2019 Basic Education Certificate Examinations, ranked first in the District.
