Mr. Epsona Harry Ayamga, Bolgatanga Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) in the Upper East Region has commended the Northern Patriots in Research and Advocacy (NORPRA) for championing and spearheading vacation classes for Senior and Junior High Schools in the Region.
About 800 students are benefiting from the vacation classes with graduate teachers teaching them Arts, Business and Science among others subjects. Students from Bolgatanga Municipality, Bongo and Talensi Nabdam Districts are benefiting from the package.
This came to light when the President of NORPRA, Mr. Bismark Adongo Ayorogo and some NORPRA Members conducted the MCE around to see how the students were being taught at Awogeya Primary School in the Municipality, one of the centres where the classes was being organized.
The MCE was full of praise for NORPRA for organising the vacation classes and said it would help address the falling standard of education in the Region.
"You must not spend much of your time watching films at the expense of your books or else you will fail your exams," he advised the students.
He urged the students to take their studies seriously, saying that academic achievement was the only powerful tool that could redeem them from poverty and ignorance.
Mr. Ayamga explained that government was committed to education and that explained why it had introduced a lot of pro-poor educational programmes including the increase of the Capitation Grant and School Feeding Grants among others.
He said government had also accepted the Anamuah -Mensah Committee Report including the proposal that the duration of the Senior High Programme be reduced from four years to three years and said it was also the policy of government to give 20 per cent of teachers' salary as an allowance for those who accepted posting to rural areas.
The President of NORPRA said his outfit had to ensure that such vacation classes were organized because of the low standard of education in the Region.
Another reason, he said, was to gainfully engage the students who would otherwise travel to the cities to look for jobs that do not exist and probably end up involving themselves in some social vices.
He said with the vacation classes, the students are engaged with their books which help them perform better in their examination.
He commended Ibis West Africa an International NGO working to promote education, good governance and organizational capacity building, for providing logistics for the classes and also giving the teachers some incentives.
He thanked the teachers for sacrificing their time and appealed to other NGOs and philanthropists to assist NORPRA in organizing such classes every year.
Some of the students appealed to the MCE to provide their schools with ICT facilities, teaching and learning materials, and also extend electricity to their schools.