UPPER East Region Outgoing Minister Expresses Concern about Sinking Educational Standards

Outgoing UER Minister

The outgoing Upper East Regional Minister, Alhaji Limuna Mohammed-Muniru, has lamented the tumbling standards of education in the region, describing the region’s last performance at the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) as an “embarrassment”. 

“The most recent BECE result,” the Regional Minister said, “is an embarrassment and we cannot gloss over it. Our region is regarded as one of the poorest because we lack certain basic resources and facilities. One major potential that we have that could help us break this chain of poverty is our human resource which can best be developed. Here again we find ourselves at the lowest level.”

Alhaji Limuna made this statement when he addressed this year’s independence parade in the Bolgatanga Municipality.

The Bolgatanga Municipal Director of Education, Gregory Amoah, in a welcome address asked teachers to eschew habits that can bring the teaching profession into disrepute. 

“I call on parents to be alive to their roles and responsibilities in the governance structures such as School Management Committees (SMCs) and Parent Teacher Association (PTAs),” Mr. Amoah said. “To my colleague teachers,” he added, “let us eschew drunkenness, laziness and absenteeism.”

In the Nabdam District, the District Chief Executive (DCE) for the area, Vivian Anarfo, reminded parents of the need to put a premium on their children’s education, saying it was by doing so a passion for learning could be ignited and sustained in the children.  

“I wish to use this opportunity to call on all well-meaning Nabdams, both home and abroad, to take keen interest in the development of Nabdam and invest in the district. This would engage their communities especially the young people to have meaningful work to do and thus have no energy left to engage in undesirable social activities. They would also serve as mentors for our young people and also help develop in them the spirit of self belief,” the DCE added.

At Bongo, the District Director of Education, Emmanuel Zumakpe, charged the district to see public schools in their communities more like their own by reporting teachers who are in the habit of absenting themselves from school. He said it was within the right of community members to track teachers and report attitude and conduct deemed to be damaging not only to the teaching profession but also to the future of the children in their care. 

Re-echoing the concerns raised by the District Director of Education, the DCE for Bongo, Alexis Ayamdor, noted that developmental efforts in the area would be meaningless if the challenges confronting education in the district remained unaddressed.

Speaking on the theme for this year’s independence celebration “Building a Better and Prosperous Ghana through Patriotism and National Unity”, the DCE also lamented what he described as the gradual fading off of communal labour and patriotism in every nook and cranny of the country. 

By Edward Adeti