The Executive Director of School for Life, Wedada Sayibu, has advised the government to prioritize basic education and adequately invest in the rural parts of the country where basic education has been neglected.
Her advice follows a report by Joy News on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 on shortage of teachers in Sabonjida in the Northern Region, which has resulted in untrained volunteers stepping in as educators for children in the community.
Speaking in an interview with Joy News, Wedada Sayibu emphasized the need of a comprehensive program that prioritizes basic education in rural parts of the country, noting that there should be intentional programs that would target these schools to ensure rural children have equal basic education for development as their urban counterparts.
“We need to have a comprehensive programme that targets the rural parts of the country with intentional programmes and investments to ensure that we bring up to power with other schools in the well-to-do areas.”
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She believes that if the government continues to pay little attention to children in these communities, the basic education system, which is the foundation, will continue to be weak as many children who should be having access to basic education will be deprived.
“if we continue to pay leap service to the challenges that are confronting rural folks, we will never get our basic system education right, because what we will be doing is that we are neglecting tens of thousands of children who should be having access to education.”
She noted that merely acknowledging the existence of schools nationwide was insufficient, given the disparate allocation of resources, emphasizing the urgency of addressing this imbalance and equipping these communities with the necessary resources to operate effectively.
Wedada Sayibu highlighted ways to ensure smooth education in such communities, noting that teachers who are posted to work there should be provided with basic social amenities like accommodation, electricity, and anything to make their lives comfortable.
She further advised that such teachers are given higher incentives as a token to the sacrifices they make, considering the state of the schools and even the communities they are posted to work in.
“We are in the 21st century, and everybody wants to have some basic social amenities, and most of these communities lack these basic social amenities. So what it means is that teachers would have to endure and sacrifice so much if they had to stay in these places. The government needs to be willing to provide them with some kind of incentives that would make up for the sacrifices that they are making.”
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Speaking on the same issue was Dr. Peter Attafuah, who is a senior education advisor with Africa Education Watch. Dr. Attafuah pointed out that one main challenge that is facing even distribution of teachers across the country is that people in authorities do reposting of their relatives to places they feel comfortable.
“When teachers are posted, within a short time you would see that people that matter, I mean people in positions, will go to either the headquarters or the regional directorates to make changes to ensure that they put their relatives or their wards at places where they think they have to feel comfortable.”
He explained that this act has led to the state where a single teacher tends to handle about three classes together.
Dr. Attafuah advised that the Ghana Education Service attaches a bond to be signed by the teachers after they make their choices of schools over a period so that teachers stay at such places to ensure good basic education in these areas.