AMA Launches GH¢6m Education Endowment Fund

Saturday February 13, 2010
By Francis Xah

THE Accra Metropolitan Assembly Chief Executive, Alfred Vanderpuije, yesterday launched a GH¢6 million Educational Endow-ment Fund aimed at providing infrastruc-ture for all public schools in the Accra metropolis.

He appealed to philanthropists, individuals, banks, churches, and business entities operating within the metropolis to consider it a social responsibility to contribute to the fund.

The fund is to facilitate AMA’s decision to abolish the shift system being run by the public schools with effect from next academic year.

Mr Vanderpuije noted that public schools faced real challenges, including inadequate classroom accommodation.

He said currently, there were 120 kindergarten schools, 359 primary schools, and 428 Junior High schools, within the Accra metropolis, with a total population of nearly 170,000 pupils including 10,000 kindergarten pupils.

He said available classroom space, however, could take approximately only 89,000 at any given time.

“In order not to deny the remaining 71,000 children, who represent some 44 per cent of the school population, their right to education, the Metropolitan Education Directorate has for many years, been compelled to adopt the shift system, by which a classroom is shared between two classes, one in the morning with the other taking over in the afternoon,” he said.

Pupils running this system benefit from only four hours of school work daily, instead of the standard eight hours required for meaningful instruction.

Pupils and teachers therefore never engage in extra curricula activities such as games, theatre arts, science lab and technology classes, as well as physical education.

The Mayor said the AMA administration had therefore made the cessation of the shift system a key priority on the agenda of the Accra Millennium City programme.

“Our goal is that at the beginning of the school term in September, this year, the 71,000 pupils who are running the shift system should begin to enjoy full school work,” he stressed.

That, he said, demanded that the AMA should provide 84 and 45 pavilions, respectively, for the primary and Junior High school’s 13,600 pieces of dual desks for the primary schools and 7,327 for Junior High Schools.

In addition, he said, 1,340 sets of teacher chairs, tables, and 1,172 storage cupboards for both primary and JHS would be required.
Mr Vanderpuije said donations to the AMA Endowment Fund should be made to Account No 100010058501, National Investment Bank, Accra Main Branch.

Mr Max Cobbina, board chairman, State Insurance Corporation, who chaired the function, promised that the SIC would donate a colossal sum of money to the fund.

He said it was a pity that Ghanaians spend more money on tertiary education while in Malaysia the opposite was the case.

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