A Deputy Minister for Education, Samuel Okudjeto Ablakwa has announced government’s plans to procure about 15 million textbooks for schools nationwide from local printing companies.<\/p>\n
“It is gratifying to note that 2015 has as many as 500,000 school uniforms that would be procured for students at the basic levels and 15 million exercise books would be procured and distributed to 36,685 basic schools,” he said.<\/p>\n
This he said is in line with government\u2019s plans to boost the struggling local printing industry.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”037hfh0OJyZDS23oOryu0DPgsIaRKcBs”]”What is even more refreshing is that these exercise books and textbooks will be printed locally in line with the present transformation agenda. In the 2015 budget printers have been given a special labor on imported production materials. The 2015 budget makes provision for \u00a06 million textbooks the highest procurement of text books in the recent history. The 2015 budget talks about the implementation of progressive free senior high school education. We are implementing progressive free SHS which will begin with 365,000 day students at a cost of GhS42.7 million Ghana cedis.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Deputy Minister, who is also the \u00a0Member of Parliament for North Tongu announced this when contributing to the ongoing Parliamentary debate on the 2015 Budget Statement in Parliament.<\/p>\n
He said the 2015 budget is loaded with a lot of social intervention programmes targeted at improving quality and access to education.<\/p>\n
On his part, a Minority MP, Yaw Owusu Boateng mocked the quality of education in the country.<\/p>\n
He said educational standards in Ghana have so low, stating that \u201cthe fact is that most of us in this House do not want our children to go to the basic public schools.\u201d<\/p>\n
“The president attests to the fact that our secondary schools have bigger problem which the budget do not address. We have not addressed the necessity to retool our secondary schools as well as our universities. Our polytechnics are nothing to write home about. Our district assemblies are asking MP\u2019s to buy chalk and provide them for schools. Is this the kind of policy we are talking about? Where is our education leading us to?” the MP asked.<\/p>\n
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By: Godwin Allotey Akweiteh & Patriciah Conteh\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n