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Africa Education Watch (Eduwatch), a research and advocacy organization for education policy, has raised concerns about the country’s educational system’s disaster readiness.
This comes after the Kpong and Akosombo dam spills, which caused two weeks of educational disruption in several impacted communities and districts in the Volta Region.
During the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, Eduwatch called for the adoption and operationalization of an Education In Emergency (EIE) Plan for Ghana, a plan that provides the necessary values, guidelines, and processes that must be followed by Education Sector Institutions and Local Governments in the event of a disaster that has the potential to affect the education sector. This call was made in a statement released on Sunday, October 22, 2023.
The process of creating an EIE Plan for Ghana has taken years to create, according to the Education Policy Research and Advocacy Organization, therefore this hasn’t fully materialized yet.
It explained that: “An EIE Plan should recognise that, education is an immediate and urgent basic need in crisis contexts, just like food and health services, and must be an integral part of any humanitarian response.”
Eduwatch stressed that: “It is critical that people’s right to education is not hampered in times of emergency.”
The Education Policy Research and Advocacy Organisation, therefore, made some recommendations including calling on the “Ministry of Education to support the Ghana Education Service and the Centre for National Distance Learning and Open Schooling (CENDLOS) to deploy pre-recorded learning content used during the COVID-19 school closure on media networks and energy efficient mobile learning devices in the affected areas.”
District Assemblies were admonished to “closely work with Education Directors to identify safe shelters for students to gather and participate in the virtual learning deployment under the guidance of teachers or facilitators.”
The “Ministry of Education to expedite the process of finalizing, resourcing, and implementing an EIE Plan for Ghana,” according to the statement.
Another request made by Eduwatch was for “regular support of Education Development Partners and Non-Governmental Organizations towards providing education aid and restoring education service in the affected districts.”
Read the full statement below:
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
