Enchi College of Education (Enchico) in the Aowin-Suaman District (ASDA) of the Western Region has made gainful strides in both academic and sporting activities during the last academic year.
The college won the Inter-College Central/Western zone competition, placed second during the Southern-Ghana zone and won the grand finale to become the overall best in a series of quiz competitions organized by the Teachers’ Fund for all colleges of education in Ghana.
In sporting activities, the college won gold in the men’s soccer and bronze in the female category.
The school also won the overall best footballer prize and other prizes in athletics during zonal games of colleges of education.
Performance of the graduands was splendid and unprecedented in that for the first time the college was able to produce a first – class student, 89 second – class diplomates, 67 third – class and 16 pass.
In all, 173 students were graduated.
This was underscored during the third graduation ceremony of the Institution last Weekend.
In her address, Principal of Enchi College of Education, Madam Victoria Aidoo, was very enthused about the remarkable improvement in performance with respect to students’ work, quiz competitions, staff performance, sporting activities, community participation, outreach for teacher development and staff accommodation projects among others.
On his part, a Deputy Minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Stephen Ackah, said in pursuit of restoring the standards of the education system, governments have made various efforts with the view to ensuring that the education service fulfills the expectations of the individual as well as making available the requisite human resource capital for national development.
He emphasized that it is the right for every child and young person to have access to quality education, not for earning a living alone.
He noted that a nation of educated, skilled, well-informed and morally sound people can build a just and prosperous society.
Mr. Ackah announced that the focus of government has been the reduction of barriers into the primary education and the creation of awareness among parents and pupils on the benefits of receiving primary education.
To this end, government increased the capitation grants and expanded the school feeding program to cover over 1 million school-going children.
He added that teacher deployment is of much concern to government whereas equitable deployment of teachers in terms of numbers, experience and qualifications is vital to the achievement of quality education for all, especially at the basic level.
The Western Regional Director of Education, Augustus Nii Lante Cleland, bemoaned that high attrition rate and inadequate number of teachers have been a major challenge to the directorate and appealed to the newly trained teachers to exhibit high level of commitment and hard work in order to justify the cost of training that the nation has incurred.
According to him, one phenomenon of basic education in Ghana in recent times is the downward trend of pupils’ performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination and described it as worrisome.
Ghana Education Service (GES) has put in place a number of measures to mitigate the issues and challenged the graduands to contribute their quota for the realization of this dream.
STORY: FROM SETH AMEYAW DANQUAH, ENCHI,W/R.
