Amansie Central awards scholarships to 165 students

Story: Kwame Asare Boadu, Jacobu
13/03/08
IN line with its policy to uplift the standard of education in the Amansie Central District, the District Assembly has awarded scholarships to 165 students to pursue various programmes in tertiary institutions in the country within the next three years.
The Deputy Ashanti Regional Minister and acting District Chief Executive (DCE) for the area, Mr Osei-Assibey Antwi, made this known at Jacobu.
He said the assembly was also sponsoring 310 untrained teachers to upgrade their academic and professional qualifications under the Untrained Teacher Training Diploma in Basic Education (UTTBE) programme.
Mr Osei-Assibey, who was speaking at the 2007 Annual Basic Schools Awards ceremony at Jacobu, said the Assembly had put up 38 classrooms in various communities over the last three years.
School children who distinguished themselves in their Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE), as well as schools that exhibited remarkable performance the previous year, were awarded for their efforts.
Prizes amounting to over GH¢2,000 were awarded to deserving pupils, who excelled in the 2007 BECE, as well as schools that achieved academic excellence.
Master Clement Yaw Kyei of the Jacobu Roman Catholic Junior High School was adjudged the best student in the BECE while Master Kyei Baffour of Tweapease Junior High School was selected as the best student in Mathematics.
Mr Osei-Assibey commended the pupils and schools that won prizes for their outstanding performance and expressed the hope that the awards would spur them on to perform even better in the coming years.
He said education was the main key to unlocking poverty, ignorance and disease that continued to be the enemies of development.
Consequently, he called on parents to do well to take the education of their children very seriously.
The deputy regional minister said the government would continue to come up with policies and programmes that would move education forward.
The Member of Parliament for Odotobri, Mr Akwasi Gyamfi, expressed concern about the deplorable state of accommodation for some teachers in the communities, and said the assembly was making efforts to address the situation.
He stated that the excellent academic performance of the district in the 2007 BECE would be meaningless if parents refused to educate their children.
The District Director of Education, Mrs T. Appiah-Nkansah, said the district placed third with a mean score of 86.72 per cent in the 2007 BECE, making it second in the national ranking and second in the Ashanti Region.
She stressed the need for teachers and parents to inculcate reading habits in the children because the benefits were enormous.