January 25, 2012

Mr Dan Botwe, Member of Parliament (MP) for Okere, has appealed to all schools within the area to organize evening and weekend classes for school children.

He said he was prepared to support such an initiative, which was the only way of ensuring high academic performance of school children, especially in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

The MP gave the assurance at separate Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) meetings at Krutiase, Obaware, Twumguaso, Nkyenua, Asasekoko, and some other communities to brainstorm on how to prevent schools in the constituency from scoring zero percent and raise the standard of education in the area.

Mr Botwe expressed concern about poor performance of BECE results in the area and general declining of academic performance in recent times.

The MP reiterated his commitment to allocate a chunk of his resources into education to improve Basic Education in the area adding that much of the funds would be used to pay teachers to organize extra classes for pupils in Junior High Schools (JHS), in the area.

Mr Botwe noted that the measure was to relieve parents of financial burden and to ensure that none of the schools in the constituency score zero per cent in this year’s BECE.

He attributed the poor BECE results in recent times to lack of proper preparation towards the examination by the candidates and their teachers.

Mr Botwe appealed to parents, traditional authorities and other stakeholders in education, to assist him to achieve his objective.

The MP said as a long-term measure, he had planned to motivate eminent citizens from the constituency to adopt schools and visit them frequently to encourage the pupils to learn hard.

Mr Botwe said he would establish an education fund with the support of people from the constituency and their friends to sponsor brilliant but needy children to continue their education after the BECE.

During the meeting it came out that majority of teachers were staying far away from the communities and therefore came to school late, a situation, which did not make them cover the require hours of teaching.

The parents therefore appealed to the MP to help them get accommodation for teachers in the various communities.

GNA