Educational authorities in the Obuasi East and Obuasi Municipalities have reiterated their commitment to ensuring that basic schools achieve a 90 per cent pass rate in the basic school exams by the end of the year, working in partnership with AngloGold Ashanti Obuasi Mine.
To this end, the Obuasi Municipal Director of Education, Mrs. Regina Teni Musa Mumuni, observed that the efforts made by Obuasi Mine, over the last three years, to ensure effective teaching and learning are already yielding some positive outcomes.
She said, “For the three years that we have collaborated with them, we have seen the work that our office staff have been doing,” while expressing appreciation for periodic training opportunities sponsored by the Obuasi Mine for teachers.
Mrs. Musa Mumuni, who was speaking at the end of a two-day ‘School Improvement Supervisory Workshop’ for some selected educational authorities in Obuasi noted that the platform provided has brought significant improvement in their work.
‘All these workshops will enhance our abilities to implement all the policies and programmes that are expected of us as an Educational Directorate,’ she added.
The Obuasi Mine, she acknowledged has among others also provided motorcycles for Improvement Supervisory Officers (SISO) and others to do their work over the period.
The Senior Manager Sustainability of AngloGold Ashanti Obuasi Mine, Mr. Emmanuel Baidoo, said the Obuasi Mine would like to leave a lasting legacy hence the pursuit of the Social Management Plan which has a key pillar to contribute to educational improvement especially basic education.
This, he noted is being done in close collaboration with all the key stakeholders with foresight of improving the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) pass rate, from 80 to 90 per cent, by 2021.
Among the interventions to achieve this objective is the improvement of school supervision, which has been recognized as a key step towards improving quality and effective teaching and learning.
Against this background, Mr. Baidoo said the implementation of the SMP in this direction started in 2019, organizing these annual workshops. “For us what we seek to achieve and to measure is the immediate outcome of this process,” he added.
He disclosed that the Obuasi Mine is considering rolling out a ten-year development plan in 2022 which will strongly feature education. In this regard, he said, all key educational actors would be involved in the planning and execution of this project.
Mr. Baidoo, therefore, urged all the stakeholders and actors to continue working with the Obuasi Mine to achieve all these objectives for the people of Obuasi.
The two-day programme covered topics such as data analysis for management; contemporary supervision and teacher support model; grant proposal writing and reporting.
It is hoped that the training will help participants to derive data from community schools, analyze and make an informed decision, reinforce existing supervisory skills among others.
In all, 32 participants from both Municipalities benefited from the programme including School Improvement Supervisory Officers (SISO) and other field officers of Ghana Education Service (GES).
The workshop forms part of the three-year Social Management Plan being implemented by the Obuasi Mine and key stakeholders. The SMP comes with a key commitment to providing support to the Obuasi Municipal and East Education Directorate to improve upon the delivery of quality education.
