As
the world prepares to rally around a new set of goals to improve lives and
protect the planet, we must be ready to own the Seventeen goals and localize
them to fit our situation so as not to wander in the wilderness of global
efforts to ensure fair distribution of development. All Seventeen of the
Sustainable Development Goals which have been adopted by the World leaders are
relevant but I believe at the core of all these is the non-negotiable need for
our leaders to make quality education accessible to all children.
Prior
to the 2012 general elections in Ghana, Education was at the heart of the
campaign promises, a development I consider as positive and an improvement in
the trend of our political campaigns. Education is undoubtedly the key to the
development of Ghana and indeed any other country.
Education
is the most powerful catalyst for development in the years ahead, serving as a
bridge from Poverty to Prosperity, from deprivation to abundance, from diseases
to good health. Education provides the surest guarantee to achieving all the
other priorities of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Ghana’s
educational sector continues to receive attention from successive governments
but as to the question of sufficiency, the quality of our education sector
gives a mirror reflection of that. Free and compulsory education, though
essential, may not be enough to ensure that all children of school going age
are actually in the classroom. We still see thousands of children on the
streets when they should be in school, thousands of children are in the farms
helping their peasant parents and guardians. Educational initiatives must leave
no one behind – not the poor or disadvantaged, and not the rural child.
While applauding government for introducing 200 Community Day Senior High Schools to
address the issue of access in some remote areas, it is important to lay bare
the facts that children in most rural communities are still struggling to even
receive standard education at the Primary and junior High school level. Beyond
getting children into school, efforts must be made to ensure the quality of the
education they receive. Setting targets based on quality rather than quantity
will be difficult but not impossible. WE CAN DO IT.
As
we embrace the Sustainable Development Goals, we must double our efforts in the
area of education. Experts estimate that
providing for a proper education system requires at least 5% of a country’s GDP
and usually about 20% of public spending. I sincerely doubt if Ghana has the
capacity to sustainably undertake such expenditure without completely
neglecting other critical sectors. For the time being, relying on development
partners remains an option and we must make frantic efforts to get more
investors and philanthropists into the sector.
District
assemblies must also localize the vision of attaining quality education. The
central government alone cannot facilitate the attainment of the vision. Civil
Society Organizations and all other partners must augment government’s efforts.
For many of my friends and me, our lives testify how access to education can
transform lives hence our resolve to Advocate and Volunteer towards improving
education. There is a transformative power in Education. ACCESSIBLE QUALITY
EDUCATION is the PILL to cure POVERTY, DISEASE and INEQUALITY.
ERIC EDEM AGBANA, founder of the United Volunteers Network and a
former SRC president at the University of Ghana.
No comments:
Post a Comment