Project Report
The Kumasi Technical University has recently built one of its new campuses at Piase and has offered to the children of Piase citizenship 15 scholarships yearly. However, like most rural education, the children encounter challenges when transitioning from Junior High to Senior High School.
We tasked our education committee to work with citizens of Piase to find avenues that PASUSA can contribute to improve education in Piase. The composition of the final committtee included heads of the schools, the assemblyman, reps of PYA, PASUSA, Piasehene, town devevlopment committee, and the PTA. Their final suggestions to PASUSA were:
- Establishment of School Improvement Committee for Piase schools
- Ensure that teaching and learning take place as expected in the schools
- Ensure that students engage in useful after-school activities that would engender all-round education and development of the children of Piase and to curb truancy
- Work to make Piase a leader in ICT learning in the Bosomtwe district
- Encourage and help more qualified indigenes of Piase to teach in Piase schools
- Provide resources, where possible, to support pedagogy in the schools
- Visit the schools regularly to identify first hand the environmental, and pedagogical needs of the schools and students
- Provide incentives to motivate the teachers and students
- Scout for ways to raise funds for supporting and meeting the needs of the schools
PASUSA’s focus after these recommendations was to provide better education access to our children. We instituted reading and mentorship programs to the students and equipped the school with computers and Internet access. Provide incentives and partnership programs with the teachers. This program will be monitored and tracked for benchmark results.
The Mentoring Program
Members of the association started a mentoring program with the PYA for some students at the Piase DA JH School. The aim is to mentor and prepare the best 10 third-year students of the school for the upcoming JHS exams.
We hope to help the students to obtain grades that will qualify them for the best high schools in Ghana. We assigned students to interested adults in Piase to monitor their attendance, behavior, progress, and personal challenges for attention. We’re also working with the teachers to provide extra support for the students. To do this successfully we bought mock exam papers for the kids to attempt in preparation for the exams. We provide extra reading materials for the kids, take them out on excursions, and also provide some monetary incentives for the teachers.
The time is short and that’s why we’re focusing on a few students. Next year we plan to extend it to more students depending on our success rate. We estimate that this year’s program will cost about GHc2,500 = $500 per student. The PYA and a member of PASUSA have paid for 4 sets of mock exam papers. We plan to give the 12 teachers involved GHc1200 as an incentive and about GHc500 for the excursion. We will appreciate the financial support from PASUSA members for the program.
