An Alliance of stakeholders in Complementary Basic Education (CBE) has held a two-day workshop in Tamale to prepare the grounds for a nationwide implementation of CBE policy within the context of state-civic partnership.

It will also elicit a shared understanding of CBE in Ghana and deepen knowledge and understanding of workable CBE models.

The CBE is a combination of approaches aimed at ensuring that all children of schoolage get the chance to enrol in school.

It, therefore, focuses on getting all the estimated 850,000 children who have reached schoolage but are out of school to get enrolled in school for Ghana to meet the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) (2) which is about ensuring that all children have access to primary education by 2015.

Participants at the workshop deliberated on two existing workable CBE models currently in operation in northern Ghana.

The models are the nine months functional literacy model for out-of-school children between the ages of eight and 14 by School for Life and the IBIS-led wing school model which targeted lower primary school pupils in dispersed communities where there were no schools at all.

At the end of the workshop, the stakeholders in a communiqué emphasised their individual and collective resolve to advance the cause of CBE in Ghana and bemoaned the delayed approval and implementation of the CBE policy which was initiated in 2007.

In the communiqué, they recognised the government’s commitment to attaining the MDGs through the provision of basic school infrastructure, teacher upgrading, capitation grant, among others, and described governments efforts at getting out-of-school children to enjoy the right to quality education as very slow.

They, therefore, asked the government to take proactive measures as spelt out in the Education Strategic Plan (ESP2010-2020) to provide inclusive education, particularly for schoolage children who were out of school.

The Alliance and other stakeholders at the workshop also called on the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES), as a matter of urgency, to review all CBE models in Ghana and tailor them for specific age cohorts.

They equally asked them to collate, scan and harmonise all versions of data on out-of-school children to support the nationwide implementation of CBE.

The alliance also said the government should identify and categorise districts in Ghana as targets for the CBE policy roll-out as well as profile and identify all potential service providers of the CBE.

While anticipating government’s timely action on these issues, the Alliance of Civil Society on CBE pledged to continue to play a complementary role in providing quality basic education for all schoolage children in Ghana.