Mahama touts achievements in education

President John Mahama says government will not relent in its efforts at providing quality education in spite of challenges.

He said said government has achieved 97% enrolment of pupils into basic schools.

John Mahama made this known during his presentation of to a cross-section of Ghanaians, the highlights of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) manifesto for 2016.

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He said government has generally increased enrolment to 9 million in the 2016 academic year, adding that the government increased educational facilities by about 26 percent, largely eliminated the shift system and distributed about 100 million exercise books to pupils.

He spoke of other interventions including the construction of new colleges of Education, distribution of free school uniforms and scholarships.

According to him, the school feeding programme increased to 1.7 million in 2014.

He said the NDC government from 2017 will establish a new College of Education to specialise in training instructors to teach in vocational institutions.

He said his next administration will appoint a deputy minister under Education who will be mandated to spearhead transformation in the vocational sector to make it more vibrant.

“We will provide accommodation for teachers who will accept postings to rural areas,” Mahama noted.

Mahama said university enrolment under his tenure has increased by 7.1% under his tenure while polytechnic enrolment shot up by 3.4% and 63.8% for the 38 colleges of education in the country.

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He also said his government has been able to reduce teacher absenteeism from 23% to 9.3 %.

He promised that his government intends eliminating schools under trees by 2021 by which he would have ended his second term should he win the December polls.