The Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) has cut the sod for the construction of the association’s national headquarters at Awutu Bereku in the Awutu Senya District of the Central Region.
The occasion also marked the launching of the 2011 GNAPS Week Celebration which begins from February 21 to 25, 2011 on the theme: “Private Schools in an Emerging Middle Income Economy”.
The President of GNAPS, Mr Godwin Sowah, said “for those of us who are in the business of producing a citizenry that is sufficiently and relevantly educated to cope with the general but crucial challenges of a middle income economy, a huge responsibility befalls us”.
He said the Ghana Education Service (GES), the German Technical Coorporation and the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning were working on a programme to include financial literacy in the senior high school curriculum.
“This is one example of how we need to find appropriate answers to the challenges attendant to life in a middle income economy,” he said.
Mr Sowah commended the National Road safety Commission and the GES for incorporating road safety in the basic school curriculum and coming out with textbooks and teachers guidelines to that effect.
“I call upon private schools to take the teaching of road safety seriously since children of basic school age are vulnerable to fall victims to road accidents. Private schools should endeavour to teach both theory and practicals or demonstrations to achieve maximum results,” he said.
He said the GNAPS would soon develop a handbook for the teaching of moral values in schools, and urged schools to use the book to fight crime.
The Central Regional Minister, Mrs Ama Benyinwa-Doe, in an address read on her behalf, said the government alone could not meet the demands of the education sector and as such, it recognised and appreciated the roles the private sector was playing.
“One area in which I feel GNAPS can further help in increasing access to education in the country is by looking at your fees again and trying to make them affordable to the ordinary Ghanaian,” she advised.
She commended teachers for the good work they were doing and urged “parents to support the efforts of teachers”.
Mrs Benyinwa-Doe said the nation could not afford to toy with education as it was the bedrock of the country’s development.
The acting Director General of the GES, Benedicta Naana Biney, in an address read on her behalf noted that the GNAPS headquarters which is about to be constructed would go a long way to facilitate the operation of private schools.
The Mankralo of the Awutu Traditional Council, Nai Kwao Kwrabi Clottey III, who cut the sod for the GNAPS headquarters, called on the association to ensure that construction works began immediately since the prices of building materials were increasing day by day.
Source: Graphic Ghana
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