Akropong, Wa Blind Schools to receive support
Story: Jasmine Arku
THE Ministry of Education has pledged to support the Akropong and Wa Schools for the blind with $50,000 each to meet their educational needs.
The beneficiary schools have, therefore, been asked to present an invoice of items needed by the schools by the end of the coming week.
This was made known by the Minister of Education, Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu, at the Visual Impairment Teacher Training (VIIT) Workshop which was launched in Accra.
The VIIT workshop, made possible by the Special Education Division (SpED) of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in partnership with the Royal Dutch Vision of Vision International, a centre of expertise for the blind and partially sighted people in Netherlands, is a three-year project involving 10 training sessions on learners with visual impairment in an inclusive education setting.
The project seeks to train and equip resource and mainstream teachers with the appropriate knowledge and skills to support children with special needs.
It will also offer a platform for resource teachers in the various regions to exchange ideas and forge professional networks which would ultimately facilitate their individual and collective quest to address inclusive education issues in their communities.
In a speech read on her behalf, Mrs Mould-Iddrisu said the ministry was committed to providing equitable educational opportunities for all children, including those with special education needs and disabilities.
She, however, noted that marginalisation and exclusion of disadvantaged children and youth in one way and or the other remained a challenge to the country’s education system.
She said for that reason, the Ministry designed an Education Strategic Plan (ESP) 2003-2015 which adopted Inclusive Education (IE) as one of the policy objectives to provide guidance to education delivery in the country.
She said the underlining objectives of the IE included integrating all children with non-severe special needs in mainstream schools by 2015 and providing training for all teachers in Special Education Needs (SEN).
The Minister also noted that 479 schools in 29 districts in seven regions were currently practising inclusive education in the country.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu said the resource teachers had a duty, under the IE practice, to serve children with diverse needs.
She added that in-service training was vital for practising resource teachers to update their knowledge and skills to make them more competent in handling all children.
She, therefore, lauded the collaboration between SpED and the Royal Dutch Vision of Vision International to build capacity for the implementation of the Inclusive Education in the county.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu also charged the participants to attach much seriousness to the workshop since they would be going out to train their colleagues. She appealed to regional, metropolitan, municipal and district directors to give the necessary support to the project by using the existing monitoring structures of the GES.
The Acting Divisional Director of Teacher Education, Mr Emmanuel Ansah Asare, who chaired the function, said government was required to improve the quality of education to ensure that education served as a catalyst for the development of quality human resource.
He noted that 75 million children were excluded from education in the world, of which seven out of 10 lived in sub-Saharan Africa or south west Asia.
He said the main reason for exclusion could be poverty, gender inequity, disability, child labour, rural lifestyle or speaking minority language.
Mr Asare, however, said Ghana had made efforts in ensuring that education was inclusive, free and compulsory.
He said the country had demonstrated its commitment by signing on to global agreements on education, some of which were the Education For All (EFA), the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations decade of Education for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Convention on Child Rights (UNCRC).
THE Ministry of Education has pledged to support the Akropong and Wa Schools for the blind with $50,000 each to meet their educational needs.
The beneficiary schools have, therefore, been asked to present an invoice of items needed by the schools by the end of the coming week.
This was made known by the Minister of Education, Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu, at the Visual Impairment Teacher Training (VIIT) Workshop which was launched in Accra.
The VIIT workshop, made possible by the Special Education Division (SpED) of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in partnership with the Royal Dutch Vision of Vision International, a centre of expertise for the blind and partially sighted people in Netherlands, is a three-year project involving 10 training sessions on learners with visual impairment in an inclusive education setting.
The project seeks to train and equip resource and mainstream teachers with the appropriate knowledge and skills to support children with special needs.
It will also offer a platform for resource teachers in the various regions to exchange ideas and forge professional networks which would ultimately facilitate their individual and collective quest to address inclusive education issues in their communities.
In a speech read on her behalf, Mrs Mould-Iddrisu said the ministry was committed to providing equitable educational opportunities for all children, including those with special education needs and disabilities.
She, however, noted that marginalisation and exclusion of disadvantaged children and youth in one way and or the other remained a challenge to the country’s education system.
She said for that reason, the Ministry designed an Education Strategic Plan (ESP) 2003-2015 which adopted Inclusive Education (IE) as one of the policy objectives to provide guidance to education delivery in the country.
She said the underlining objectives of the IE included integrating all children with non-severe special needs in mainstream schools by 2015 and providing training for all teachers in Special Education Needs (SEN).
The Minister also noted that 479 schools in 29 districts in seven regions were currently practising inclusive education in the country.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu said the resource teachers had a duty, under the IE practice, to serve children with diverse needs.
She added that in-service training was vital for practising resource teachers to update their knowledge and skills to make them more competent in handling all children.
She, therefore, lauded the collaboration between SpED and the Royal Dutch Vision of Vision International to build capacity for the implementation of the Inclusive Education in the county.
Mrs Mould-Iddrisu also charged the participants to attach much seriousness to the workshop since they would be going out to train their colleagues. She appealed to regional, metropolitan, municipal and district directors to give the necessary support to the project by using the existing monitoring structures of the GES.
The Acting Divisional Director of Teacher Education, Mr Emmanuel Ansah Asare, who chaired the function, said government was required to improve the quality of education to ensure that education served as a catalyst for the development of quality human resource.
He noted that 75 million children were excluded from education in the world, of which seven out of 10 lived in sub-Saharan Africa or south west Asia.
He said the main reason for exclusion could be poverty, gender inequity, disability, child labour, rural lifestyle or speaking minority language.
Mr Asare, however, said Ghana had made efforts in ensuring that education was inclusive, free and compulsory.
He said the country had demonstrated its commitment by signing on to global agreements on education, some of which were the Education For All (EFA), the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations decade of Education for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Convention on Child Rights (UNCRC).
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