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A $60 million project aimed at enhancing quality education delivery and strengthening accountability in basic schools in the Northern, North East, Upper East and Upper West regions has been launched in Walewale in the West Mamprusi Municipality.
Dubbed "Strengthening Accountability in Ghana's Education System (SAGES) activity," the five-year initiative is also to improve performance and ensure quality teaching and learning outcomes in 17 selected districts in the four regions.
The Ministry of Education initiative is being funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
The project would be implemented by Care Ghana, an NGO, and its consortium of partners, namely School for Life (SfL), Afrikids, Community Development Alliance (CDA), Crown Agency (CA) and Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC).
Under the project, an accountability framework would be designed to enable the ministry to track deliveries and also measure the impact of educational institutions in the beneficiary areas.
In all, about 1,254 schools and communities, and 508,269 students are expected to benefit from the project.
The Director-General of the Ghana Education Service (GES), Dr Eric Nkansah, whose speech was read on his behalf by the Director of Schools and Instructions at GES, Prince Charles Agyemang-Duah, also said that through the project, relevant data would be generated to help in the transformational drive of the education sector.
He explained that when the structures of accountability were put in place, the ministry would be able to hold the actors accountable in the discharge of their mandate.
The Deputy Chief of Party of SAGES, Mohammed Amin Dawuda, said that the project had a national dimension to support agencies under the Ministry of Education which were responsible for the implementation of pre-tertiary education in the country.
He said one of the challenges facing the education sector was an ineffective accountability system which the director said the project would also help to address.
For his part, the North East Regional Minister, Yidana Zakaria, in a speech read on his behalf, lauded the GES and its partners for the project, and said it would go a long way to complement the government’s effort to enhance quality education in the country.
"We find the project as a timely intervention to enable us consolidate on gains we have made as a country and also address gaps identified in the education system," he said.
The Programmes Director of School for Life (SfL), Ayuba Abukari, expressed his outfit's commitment to ensure the successful implementation of the project.
