Approaches to Literacy in Ghana: The Challenges Faced. By Tijani Hamza (IBIS EFE Programme Director, Ghana) - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

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Approaches to Literacy in Ghana: The Challenges Faced. By Tijani Hamza (IBIS EFE Programme Director, Ghana)

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Title: Approaches to Literacy in Ghana: The Challenges Faced. By Tijani Hamza (IBIS EFE Programme Director, Ghana)


1
Approaches to Literacy in Ghana The Challenges
Faced.ByTijani Hamza(IBIS EFE Programme
Director, Ghana)
2
PRESENTATION STRUCTURE
  • What is Literacy?
  • Why the Literacy Campaign?
  • Literacy Profile of Ghana Implications.
  • Initial Approaches to Literacy in Ghana.
  • Current Approaches.
  • General Challenges

3
1. DEFINITIONS
  • a. Literacy, simply defined by UNESCO, is the
    ability to read and write and understand a short
    statement.
  • b. The acquisition of relevant skills without
    consecutive formal learning.

4
2. WHY THE LITERACY CAMPAIGN?
  • Because of its inherent benefits
  • Literacy among agriculturalists, for example, may
    contribute to an increase in agricultural
    production (crucial in development).
  • Literate parents tend to have smaller families
    (reducing high rate of population growth with
    stress on development).

5
  1. Literates have more awareness of the need to
    educate their children and to help to check
    truancy and drop-out from school, thereby raising
    the efficiency of the formal school system.
  2. It creates awareness in people which enables them
    to see the need for change and development.
  3. It strengthens the response of people to economic
    and other incentives.

6
3. LITERACY PROFILE OF GHANA ITS IMPLICATIONS
  1. According to the 2000 Ghana Population census,
    nearly half (46) of the population of Ghana is
    illiterate.
  2. There are marked regional disparities the
    proportion of the population that is illiterate
    in Greater Accra is 21, whereas in Ashanti it is
    40, in Brong-Ahafo it is 54, and in the three
    northern regions it is 76 and over.
  3. 64 of women in Ghana are illiterate, as compared
    with 38 of men.

7
  1. It is also estimated that 27 of the total number
    of school-aged children (believed to be about 4
    million children) are not in school.
  2. What is even worse is that 60 of children in
    school are unable to read or write simple
    sentences after six years of basic education.

8
IMPLICATIONS
  1. Ghana cannot achieve EFA goal 4 Achieving a 50
    per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy
    by 2015 ()
  2. at individual levels, the ability of such
    illiterates to carry out every day activities
    such as read signposts, understand medicine
    labels and machinery instructions, confirm
    commercial transactions and avoid being cheated,
    is greatly restricted.
  3. Their effective participation in the national
    development effort would be greatly constrained.

9
4. INITIAL APPROACHES (1717-1956)
  1. Non-Formal Adult literacy Approach by
    missionaries.
  2. A very narrow objective to enable their converts
    to read and understand the Bible.
  3. In 1940 the British government came out with a
    short-lived policy on adult literacy to
    accelerate socio-economic development in Ghana.
  4. In 1951, Nkrumahs Mass Education Plan, to wipe
    out illiteracy through a mass literacy drive in
    six Ghanaian languages. to educate the people to
    understand their civic rights and
    responsibilities and also use their
    potentialities and talents in achieving desirable
    goals in the economic, social and cultural
    spheres.

10
Methodology
  • Volunteer instructors (night school teachers) in
    the rural areas taught the alphabet through sight
    and sound (combination of words and pictures).
  • Based on the need to make it functional, there is
    a practice where context reality offers support
    to identify key words for discussion.
  • Child centered
  • Gender sensitive methodology

11
  • In 1987, the government of Ghana set out to
    revive mass literacy programmes. The Non-Formal
    Education Division (NFED) was set up within the
    Education Ministry to rally public support,
    coordinate and implement programmes to eliminate
    illiteracy by the year 2000. The UK Department
    for International Development (DFID) funded pilot
    literacy projects in two regions, and these
    proved successful. The Government of Ghana
    subsequently expanded the projects nationally,
    under the policy named the Functional Literacy
    Skills Project (FLSP), which lasted between 1992
    and 1997.

12
  • The National Functional Literacy Programme (NFLP)
    was launched in 2000, as the second phase of the
    earlier FLSP. Its aim is to educate about one
    million non-literate adults, especially the rural
    poor and women, by 2004. In December 2004, the
    period was extended to December 2006.
    Participants in the NFLP obtain functional
    literacy in a Ghanaian language, numeracy skills
    and participation in development and income
    generating activities, all at no fee.

13
Methodology Content
  • Instruction based on a modified form of the
    Freirian Methodology, which involves discussion
    of composite pictures describing an object or
    situation, and use of syllabisation to form
    meaningful words and sentences.
  • Topics public health, safe drinking water,
    farming techniques, immunization and reproductive
    health.

14
5. CURRENT APPROACHES
  • A. GOVERNMENTAL
  • The Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education
    (FCUBE) policy was introduced in 1996 to improve
    access to basic education for all. This might
    prove successful in diminishing the flow of young
    illiterates. However, it appears unlikely that
    formal basic education will succeed in
    eradicating illiteracy in the immediate future,
    given current quality indicators though enrolment
    rates are improved.

15
  • B. NON-GOVERMENTAL
  • From the late 90s, a number of non-governmental
    organisations stepped in to help wipe out
    illiteracy, targeting mainly the out-of-school
    children in hard-to-reach parts of the country.

16
Organisation Period Approach
Action Aid 1996 Shepherd School Programme Provides basic education to children from isolated and marginalised communities, to equip them with basic literacy and numeracy skills and to provide a connection to the formal school system.
17

School For Life (SFL) 1996 Complementary Education Offers a 9-month mother-tongue literacy, numeracy and creative skills programme for 8 to 14 year-old boys and girls in selected deprived communities.
18

EQUALL (Education Quality for All) 2004-2009 Complementary Education/Reading Improvement in Primary Education (RIPE) Mother-tongue literacy, numeracy and creative skills to 8 to 14 year-old boys and girls in selected deprived communities.
19
Olinga Foundation for Human Development 2001 Enlightening the Heart Offers literacy in mother tongue to remote and hard-to-reach school populations, targeting ages 9 to 15 years.
20

IBIS (EfE) 2006 Complementary Education Programme (CEP) Offers a 9-month CEP in mother-tongue literacy, numeracy and creative skills to 8 to 14 year-old boys and girls in selected deprived communities.
21

Ghana Institute of Linguistics, Literacy and Bible Translation (GILLBT) 1962 Offers a community-based literacy programme. It aims to combat poverty and exclusion from social, economic and political processes brought about by lack of education, economic opportunities and by lack of awareness of citizens rights. Apart from basic literacy, the programme provides its beneficiaries with local knowledge on sustainable development, gender promotion, income-generating activities, as well as HIV/AIDS and other health related issues. Also prints the primers in mother-tongue for other interested NGOs.
22
6. GENERAL CHALLENGES
  • Absence of a coherent, long-term national
    literacy policy encompassing attention to
    governance, programme design and delivery, human
    and financial resources, and the promotion of an
    environment in which individuals are encouraged
    to become literate and to sustain their skills.
  • Total lack of partnership with the government by
    NGOs or synergy among themselves in addressing
    the illiteracy problem.

23
  • The curriculum for adult learners is not informed
    by an understanding of how the adult literates
    use their knowledge (helping children with
    homework, administering medical prescriptions
    properly, communicating with government offices,
    writing letters, reading religious texts, opening
    savings accounts). Themes are arbitrarily
    chosen. No wonder there was a very low adult
    survival rate in the classes that they found
    irrelevant and boring.

24
  • The facilitators in the night classes were not
    trained teachers and lacked the skills in
    teaching adults The norm was still a formal,
    basic skills approach with emphasis on mastering
    reading, writing and numeracy within a specified
    time. Husbands and wives were put together in the
    same classes)
  • The time-table did not respect the seasonal
    calendar of the farmers, hence the high rate of
    absenteeism during the farming season.

25
  • Supervision of the adult classes was ineffective.
  • The Non-Formal Education Department was suspected
    of being an appendage of the then National
    Democratic Congress so were the facilitators.
  • The physically handicapped (especially the
    visually impaired) are excluded from these
    campaigns for lack of the appropriate tools (e.g.
    Braille).

26
7. Conclusion
  • Ghana is far from achieving Education For All by
    the year 2015 (Goal 4).
  • A lot of progress is, however, likely to be made
    towards reaching that goal if, among other
    things, the government ceases to view education
    in the formal and non-formal dichotomy. The
    first challenge identified above (on planning,
    resources and the creation of enabling literate
    environments) should be tackled.
  • It is heart-warming that the recent complementary
    approaches being adopted by NGOs (e.g. School for
    Life and IBIS) are addressing some of the
    above-mentioned challenges flexible timetable,
    effective supervision, relevant content,
    learner-centred methodologies

27
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