Africa Education Watch has called on the government and the Ministry of Education to initiate plans to own and fund all programmes under its bilingual instructional policy, "Transition to English (T2E) Plus", in collaboration with USAID.

In a press statement issued in Accra to mark World Literacy Day, today, the CSO noted that government's ownership of the policy, aimed at improving literacy through the use of local languages, will aid in having more sustainability outcomes.

“Beyond USAID’s Support, Ghana’s Ministry of Education must plan to own and fund all programmes under its bilingual instructional policy for sustainability of outcomes.

"This is because the use of local languages for teaching and learning in schools before transitioning to English has been unstable in Ghana over the past decades, despite its success in other African countries," Eduwatch stated.

The CSO further noted that, “a well-funded, uninterrupted, and effectively mainstreamed bilingual instructional policy with adequate teaching and learning materials and requisite alignment to teacher deployment policy, is key to improving literacy levels.”

This comes after the Ministry of Education and Ghana Education Service, in partnership with USAID Ghana, launched the Transition To English (T2E) Plus Programme through the USAID Partnership for Education: Learning Activity.

Under the programme, the Government of Ghana and the U.S Government will support over 5,000 schools in all 16 regions.

The programme will air supplemental radio reading lessons nationwide; conduct training, coaching, and mentoring for primary 1 through primary 3 teachers and education personnel; and provide teaching and learning materials for pupils, caregivers, and teachers.

Eduwatch stated that this will help increase and improve learning in low performing basic schools, especially in rural Ghana.

“The launch of the T2E Plus brings some hope to children in low performing public schools, but this must be complemented with an alignment with teacher postings, and ensuring teachers posted to these schools have the requisite local language proficiency to teach.”