About 21,477 pupils in various basic schools from five regions in northern Ghana have each received assorted learning materials to support in their academic activities.
Each pupil received about eight exercise books, pens, pencils, colour pencils, sharpeners and erasers and a cloth school bag.
The pupils underwent nine months of Complementary Basic Education (CBE) programme from October 2018 to June 2019, as well as passed an assessment by the Ghana Education Service (GES) after which they were placed in both primary and junior high schools in the districts.
The districts are the Mion, Karaga, Gushegu, Nanumba North, Nanumba South, Kpandai, East Mamprusi, and the Bawku Municipal.
The rest are Pusiga, Binduri, Kassena-Nankana West, Kassena-Nankana Municipal, Bongo, Nabdam, Lawra Lambusie, Nkwanta North, Nkwanta South, Krachi East and Krachi Nchumuru.
The CBE programme offers out-of-school children beyond school starting age (eight to 16 years) opportunity to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills in their mother-tongues to enable them to enroll in the formal school system.
This CBE programme is being implemented by Plan International Ghana, an international non-governmental organization, under its Reaching and Teaching out-of-school Children (REACH) project, with support from Educate A Child, an NGO and the GES.
Mr Sulemana Gbana, Project Manager at the Northern Programmes Support Office of Plan International Ghana, who toured some of the schools in some of the districts including Karaga and Mion in the Northern Region to present the learning materials to the pupils, urged parents to ensure that they sent their children to school.
Mr Gbana further expressed the need for parents to complement the REACH project by providing other basic educational needs of their children such as school uniforms and sandals to support them to remain in school to help address the phenomenon of out-of-school children in the country.
Mr Samuel Nnim Balenbein, Assembly Member for the Tuwua Electoral Area, who is also a Teacher at the Tambabu D/A Primary School in the Mion District, expressed gratitude to Plan International Ghana for the gesture, and said the gifts would influence the pupils to remain in school.
He appealed to government to complete a six-unit classroom block of the Tambabu D/A Primary School, which has been abandoned and indicated that the completion of the classroom block would provide adequate classrooms for the pupils to enhance effective teaching and learning in the area.
