Professor S.K.B. Asante, Board Chairman, of the Salvation Army Senior High School at Akyem Wenchi in the Kwaebibirem District, has expressed worry about the wide gap between the rural and urban educational systems.
"Despite the fact that the most valued source in this age is intellectual capital, schools in the rural areas are confronted with
disturbing challenges of deprivation and a host of interlocking problems, making it increasingly difficult for them to attain even a minimum level of quality education".
Professor Asante observed that despite recent efforts by government to make education affordable to as many children as possible, the future of a pupil is determined for him or her by the circumstances of his or her birth.
Speaking at the first speech and prize giving-day of the Salvation Army Senior High School at Akyem Wenchi at the weekend, he said, "If you are born in the rural area, your destiny is struggle and hardship in life; and if you
are born and bred in the urban setting, your destiny is fairly good and easy life, so far as provision of schools amenities and infrastructure is concerned".
The speech day was on the theme: "The Educational Reform: Challenges and Opportunities for a Developing School in a Rural Area".
Professor Asante observed that many schools in the rural areas were acutely confronted with problems of poor quality of instruction, inadequate instructional materials and limited access, especially for the poor and females.
"The outcome of the unfair distribution of infrastructure and social amenities is that the rural schools often cannot attract and retain
teachers, neither can they attract and retain high flying students".
He indicated that so far as teachers were concerned, it took considerable sacrifice on the part of qualified ones to agree to teach in
rural areas, adding that where those teachers volunteered to work, they often did so only as a stop gap measure, while they look for brighter
opportunities elsewhere.
Professor Asante said there was no way that Ghana could attain the much coveted middle-income status and standard of living or join the enviable club of newly industrializing countries in a foreseeable future without first, upgrading rural areas socially, economically and environmentally, to achieve a better balance between rural and urban investment.
He said it had therefore become almost an imperative for the government to stimulate efforts towards reducing disparities in incomes and standards of living between rural and urban populations, in order to attract good and
dedicated teachers to the rural areas.
"Indeed, an improvement in our rural conditions is essential, not only on moral grounds, but also as a necessary condition for the effective mobilization of our manpower, initiative and innovation, in order to utilize
the abundant but presently under-utilized resources, with which the country is endowed"
Dr Kofi Asare, Member of Parliament (MP), for Akwatia, appealed to parents to invest in the education of their children, reminding them that
the diamonds they had been relying on for the past years were now being exhausted.
He was not happy about the situation where video centres operate during school hours, encourage students to patronize those centres, and appealed to the chiefs and opinion leaders to take steps to redress the situation.