The Institute for Education Planning and Administration, IEPA, has launched a project to prepare school managements in the quest to bring change and continuous school improvement to basic schools.
Dubbed: “Adopt a School", the project is aimed at improving the capacity and confidence of school leaders, supporting schools to ultimately improve continuous learning and also providing community services.
Addressing a gathering at the launch of the project at the Komenda Edina- Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA) Municipal Assembly Hall, the Director of IEPA, Dr. Michael Amakye, said the project would cater for 92 schools in the Municipality. According to him, KEEA was benefitting from the project as the first municipal assembly in the country because of the already existing partnership between the IEPA and the Assembly.
Dr. Amakye noted that faculty members of IEPA would conduct needs assessment in the various schools and design programmes to build the capacity of heads, school management committee, teachers, and executives of the Parent-Teacher Association on how to work together to bring continuous change in schools in the Municipality. He added that the IEPA had the requisite human resources to run the programme and would soon extend the project to other districts in the Central region. “Our target is by the end of March 2018, we would have gone to all districts in the Central region and then we move to Greater Accra, Eastern, Western and the Northern regions," he said.
Dr. Amakye indicated that some faculty members of IEPA would be assigned to selected schools under the project to provide onsite support to the schools in various ways, including helping schools to develop roadmap towards high performance and also assisting school management to conduct staff appraisal meetings, among many others.
In a speech read by the Vice-Dean, School of Educational Development & Outreach, Prof. Christine Adu-Yeboah, on behalf of the the Provost of the College of Education Studies, Prof. Magnus Wilmot, lauded the initiative of IEPA and called on all stakeholders to make the project a success. He said research had shown that the by-product of a good school leader “includes attractive and high performing schools, improved schools and high learning achievement ". He added " Behind every high achieving school is a good school manager and vice versa".
Prof. Wilmot noted that providing training for different category of stakeholders, school managers and enhancing the roles of parents were vital tools for improving schools and students learning. He appealed to beneficiary stakeholders to capitalize on the project to network among themselves through sharing of ideas to enhance teaching and learning.